Tag: trans-cis shared impact

Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek admits retaliating against Maine for Gov. Mills defying Trump on trans athletes, suspending state’s birth and death registration programs

Portland Press Herald: Social Security official ended program for Maine newborns because he was ‘ticked’ at Mills (archive) (2024-03-25):

The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration admitted this week that he specifically targeted Maine after watching Gov. Janet Mills clash with President Donald Trump during an event at the White House.

“I was ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president,” Lee Dudek told the New York Times.

Dudek directed the agency to cancel a decades-old program that allows parents to register their newborns for a social security number while at hospitals.

The mandate only applied to Maine and required new parents to show up at a Social Security office in person to register their newborns.

The change was rescinded one day later after an outcry from Maine and criticism from the state’s congressional delegation. A similar program to end electronic death records also targeted Maine and was quickly reversed. […]

Dudek issued an apology when he rescinded the order, although he never provided an explanation for the abrupt change or for the reversal.

“I screwed up. I’ll admit I screwed up,” Dudek told the Times this week. […]

Dudek said he made the decision after watching a testy exchange between Mills and Trump at the National Governors Association dinner in February.

In the February dust-up, Trump told Mills she had better change the state’s policy allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports or the state would not get any federal funding.

When Mills answered that she was following state and federal laws, Trump said, “We are the federal law.” Mills replied, “See you in court.”

Analysis

This is a clear example of a White House-selected acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Leland Dudek, retaliating against an entire state of mostly cis people by interfering with their SSA systems in a wholly unrelated manner, in reaction to a state leader challenging the president on his anti-trans policy. Dudek admits this response was inappropriate and he knows it. How do we know that other acts of inappropriate retaliation by the Social Security Administration against US residents, based on our policy disagreements with Trump on trans issues, won’t happen again?

Republicans on Musk’s Social Security comments: Stop talking now

NBC News: Trump allies press the White House to dial back Elon Musk’s media interviews over his Social Security jabs (2025-03-23):

After his election, Donald Trump told NBC News that “we’re not touching Social Security,” other than to make it more efficient. But Elon Musk, who now wields enormous power in his role cutting government spending, has recently made comments critical of the program that are coming into conflict with Trump’s promise and worrying members of the president’s own party.

Those concerns have prompted some Trump allies to question whether the billionaire should continue to do so many media interviews, four people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

A particularly problematic remark came during Musk’s conversation with media personality Joe Rogan in late February, in which he described Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” A couple of weeks later, the billionaire once again went after Social Security, this time in an interview with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow. Musk, when discussing entitlement spending he deemed wasteful or fraudulent, said the program was “the big one to eliminate.” […]

A Trump adviser acknowledged that they were aware of “outside concern” around Musk’s comments. Trump allies — including some on Wall Street, in corporate America and Congress — have conveyed to the White House and even the president directly that Musk either has to be taken off air or needs to be more scripted. […]

The Democratic firm Blueprint tested 20 different political messages about Musk, and the four that were most “concerning” to registered voters were all about Social Security. The top two were about Musk’s proposals to fire Social Security Administration employees and dismantle phone services. By contrast, voters said the messages least concerning to them were about his personal life, such as Musk fathering children with five different women. The survey was conducted last week and released Thursday. […]

But the former official said Trump may be more amenable to tweaks that can be sold as eliminating waste, fraud and abuse — a sentiment the president hinted at in falsely asserting to a joint session of Congress that millions of dead people are receiving Social Security checks. That assertion came after Musk promoted similar misinformation online. The billionaire White House adviser has also claimed hundreds of billions of dollars in Social Security payments are being funneled to undocumented immigrants — framing that could appeal to Trump.

Musk’s promise to cut $1 trillion to $2 trillion in federal spending is virtually impossible without touching entitlement spending. And while Trump insists he wants to root out fraud, that’s unlikely to dent the program’s spending. The Social Security inspector general found that improper payments from fiscal year 2015 to 2022 totaled less than 1% of benefits paid over that time — and most of those were overpayments. […]

This person noted that elderly Social Security recipients who might not be tech-savvy and live far from a Social Security office are going to be most affected by the changes.

“It’s going to prevent people from getting their benefits,” this person said, adding that the effort amounts to “a very stealthy, very covert hostile takeover.” […]

Altman said giving Musk’s “DOGE teenagers and 20-year-olds in control of the Social Security Administration” access to seniors’ personal data creates data safety concerns that leave the program vulnerable to hackers and scammers — “a con artist’s dream,” she said. She argued that new rules requiring in-person office visits to register could mean that seniors who are disabled or immobile don’t end up getting benefits. And she warned that the removal of Social Security Administration workers will lead to weaker customer service and longer wait times for benefits.

Digital rights group warns Trump executive order eliminating information silos could enable targeting of trans people, immigrants and political enemies

The Record, Trump order on information sharing appears to have implications for DOGE and beyond (2025-03-21):

A new executive order from President Donald Trump aims to expand information-sharing across federal agencies as well as between federal and state governments, but civil libertarians and other experts are warning that the main purpose is to help normalize how the Department of Government Efficiency is handling government data.

The order, issued Thursday, directs all federal agency heads to modify or rescind any regulations preventing the sharing of unclassified data and records between federal agencies.

Agency heads also must ensure that the U.S. government has “unfettered access” to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding. The order extends to all such data even when stored in third-party databases. […]

While the new EO asserts that the removal of data “silos” is designed to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse, disturbing mission creep is very possible, said Elizabeth Laird, director of equity and civic technology at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology.

There are no assurances that the data won’t be used for “targeting people who the administration has separately said are a priority for them,” Laird said. “That can include immigrants, it can include people who are transgender, it can include people that speak up” against the administration. […]

Allowing DOGE to co-mingle agency data also could lead to abuses against the general population, said Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the ACLU.

Individuals going through airport security could routinely be checked against a centralized database so that the Transportation Security Administration, for example, could discover they unknowingly haven’t paid back taxes and delay their travel, he said. […]

Court filings in DOGE cases have revealed examples of irregular data sharing. On March 14, a filing said a former worker in the office, Marko Elez, broke Treasury Department rules when he sent an unencrypted database containing personally identifiable information outside of the agency.