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Censored Social Security Probe Showed How DOGE Damaged Agency Services

Censored Social Security Probe Showed How DOGE Damaged Agency Services

A Social Security advocacy organization on Thursday blasted the Trump administration for covering up damaging information contained in an inspector general report released in December.

According to The Washington Post, a report from the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) inspector general about call wait times for beneficiaries was altered to make it seem as though wait times to speak to representatives had been reduced to under 10 minutes per call.

"An unpublished draft of the report... showed that the inspector general had planned to report another metric—called the ‘total wait time’—to measure the overall time it takes for callers to be connected with an SSA employee,” the Post explained. “According to that draft report, in 2025 total wait time averaged 46 minutes to over two hours.”

The Post added that this “information was deleted from the draft after the agency reviewed it before publication.”

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, responded to the report by saying that “now we know why [President Donald] Trump fired the inspector general at Social Security,” noting that the SSA IG was one of several fired across multiple agencies at the start of Trump’s second term.

Altman then argued that the attack on inspectors general was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle government transparency all together.

“Inspectors general are the American peoples’ eyes and ears in these agencies,” said Altman. “The Trump administration is undermining that oversight at every turn. Under this administration, the IG has no ability to conduct independent oversight. There is no meaningful check on the Trump administration’s Social Security sabotage.”

Democratic communications consultant Jesse Lee linked the damage to the SSA documented in the draft IG report to efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which went on a firing spree of federal workers last year.

“So DOGE did a smash and grab at the Social Security Administration, breaking into the most sensitive data, firing phone and in-person case workers,” Lee wrote. “Trump appointee waved around an IG report claiming wait times were fine—after burying the real report saying they were up to two hours.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet


Trump Mocked For Claiming He Was "Not Involved' With Losing Texas Candidate

Trump Mocked For Claiming He Was "Not Involved' With Losing Texas Candidate

Hours after the Republican Party suffered an upset defeat in a special election in a deep-red district in Texas, President Donald Trump falsely claimed he had nothing to do with the race.

While speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Sunday, Trump was asked what he made of the GOP losing a Texas state senate election in a district that he carried by 17 percentage points in 2024. Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a Machinists Union leader, won on Saturday by 57 percent to 43 percent -- a shift of more than 30 percent.

“I’m not involved in that, that’s a local Texas race,” Trump replied.

In fact, Trump endorsed losing Republican candidate Leigh Wambsganss on three separate occasions in just the last three days, including a Saturday post on Truth Social where he called her “a phenomenal Candidate” and “an incredible supporter of our Movement to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

Trump’s attempt to distance himself from someone whom he enthusiastically endorsed just one day ago elicited instant ridicule from many of his critics on social media.

“Two days ago, the president used his social media platform to endorse this ‘phenomenal candidate’ and to urge ‘all America First Patriots’ in the district to get out and vote for her,” remarked Princeton historian Kevin Kruse. “Today, he says he doesn’t know anything about it and had nothing to do with it. He’s lying or demented or both.”

Zak Williams, a political consultant at Zenith Strategies and a native Texan, wrote that Trump was “intimately involved” in the campaign, noting that Republicans outspent Democrats in the race by a margin of 10 to 1.

Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who left the GOP over his disgust with Trump, expressed astonishment at the president’s blatant dishonesty.

“He’s such a horrible person,” wrote Walsh. “And such a dishonest person. Yes, he was involved in that race. He endorsed the losing candidate, and she lost 100% because of him. She lost 100% because of this past year of his chaos, his cruelty, and his incompetence. Her loss was a total rejection of him.”

Journalist James Barragán of TX Capital Tonight, argued that the Wambsganss loss calls into question just how effective Trump’s endorsements will be in moving voters in the 2026 midterm elections.

“President Trump says he’s ‘not involved’ in SD-9 race where his endorsed candidate (who he boosted multiple times in the runup) lost a +17 Trump district,” wrote Barragán. “He’s either not being truthful or it makes you question how much stock people should put into his social media endorsements.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Boasting Of  Bathroom's 'Statuary Marble' During Shutdown, Trump Provokes Fury

Boasting Of  Bathroom's 'Statuary Marble' During Shutdown, Trump Provokes Fury

As millions of families across the US are about to lose their access to food aid over the weekend, President Donald Trump on Friday decided to show off photos of a White House bathroom that he boasted had been refurbished in “highly polished, statuary marble.”

Trump posted photos of the bathroom on his Truth Social platform, and he explained that he decided to remodel it because he was dissatisfied with the “art deco green tile style” that had been implemented during a previous renovation, which he described as “totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era.”“I did it in black and white polished Statuary marble,” Trump continued. “This was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there!”

Trump’s critics were quick to pan the remodeled bathroom, especially since it came at a time when Americans are suffering from numerous policies the president and the Republican Party are enacting, including tariffs that are raising the cost of food and clothing; expiring subsidies for Americans who buy health insurance through Affordable Care Act exchanges; and cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) programs in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Sure, you might not be able to eat or go to the doctor, but check out how nice Trump’s new marble shitter is,” remarked independent journalist Aaron Rupar on Bluesky.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who has become a critic of Trump, ripped the president for displaying such tone deafness in the middle of a federal government shutdown.

“Government still shutdown, Americans not getting paid, food assistance for low-income families and children about to be cut off, and this is what he cares about,” he wrote on X. “He’s a psychopath, humanly incapable of caring about anyone or anything but himself.”

Don Moynihan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, expressed extreme skepticism that the White House bathroom during Abraham Lincoln’s tenure was decked out in marble and gold.

“Fact check based on no research but with a high degree of confidence: This is not the marble that was originally in the Lincoln Bedroom,” he wrote. “It is more likely to the be retrieved from a Trump casino before it was demolished.”

Fashion critic Derek Guy, meanwhile, mostly left politics out of his criticisms of the remodeled bathroom, instead simply observing that “White House renovations are currently being spearheaded by someone with famously bad interior design taste.”

Earlier this month, Trump sparked outrage when he demolished the entire East Wing of the White House to make way for a massive White House ballroom financed by donations from some of America’s wealthiest corporations—including several with government contracts and interests in deregulation—such as Apple, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Palantir.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

migrants border fence

Nearly Half Of GOP Voters Support Concentration Camps For Migrant Workers

A pollster this week winced at his own survey's results when it comes to the policies President-elect Donald Trump's voters support when it comes to dealing with undocumented immigrants.

As Axios reports, a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that 46 percent of Republican voters support using the United States military to round up immigrants and put them into camps.

Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, told Axios that he felt uneasy about simply having to survey voters about their support for rounding up immigrants and putting them into military-run camps in the first place.

"There have been questions in the Trump era where I've thought...I can't believe that we need to know the answer to this question," said Jones.

At the same time, Jones expressed cautious optimism given that overall support for using the military to round up immigrants remains low for the time being.

"I guess the good news is that three-quarters of the country rejects this idea that we should be putting immigrants in the country illegally into internment camps guarded by the military," he said.

As Axios notes, Trump has sent signals that he is willing to use the military to remove and detain undocumented immigrants, and he also said during an interview with Time Magazine that he would support keeping them in camps of some kind.

During the 2024 election campaign, Trump also suggested he might use the military against his domestic political opponents, whom he described as "the enemy within."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Rep. Elise Stefanik

Stefanik Secretly Promised Trump 'Aggressive' House GOP Attack On Prosecutor

A new CNN report details secret back channel talks between House Republicans and Donald Trump in which the former president exerts pressure on his congressional allies to do his bidding.

According to CNN's sources, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has emerged as House Republicans' point person for keeping Trump informed of their assorted investigations, and she recently promised the former president that the caucus would offer an "aggressive" response to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's potential indictment of him for his 2016 hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who serves on the House Oversight Committee, tells CNN that she also regularly spills details to Trump about Republicans' plans, and she says she's sometimes surprised at how much Trump already knows what's going on.

“I keep him up on everything that we’re doing,” she explains. “He seems very plugged in at all times. Sometimes I’m shocked at how he knows all these things. I’m like, ‘How do you know all this stuff?’”

CNN notes that it is unprecedented for a party to essentially let itself be used as a "shield" to protect a former president who is under multiple criminal investigations.

As of this writing, Trump has still not been indicted on any criminal charges.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Refusing To Testify About January 6, Jeffrey Clark Risks Prosecution

Refusing To Testify About January 6, Jeffrey Clark Risks Prosecution

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division Jeffrey Clark, a key figure in former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, apparently refused to answer questions during his Friday testimony before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riots.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci

Fauci Brushes Off GOP Senator’s Conspiracy 'Question' At Hearing

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday swatted back Sen. Roger Marshall's (R-KS) attempt to trap him with a gotcha question.

During Fauci's Senate appearance, Marshall tried to corner Fauci on whether the United States may have inadvertently funded the creation of the novel coronavirus in a Wuhan lab.

"If COVID-19 is indeed a product of lab manipulation, can you sit here and unequivocally say the viral studies the [National Institutes of Health] funded... could not be indirectly or directly related to this final COVID-19 virus?" Marshall asked.

Fauci replied that the specific experiments in Wuhan that received NIH funding would not have resulted in the creation of COVID-19.

"The NIH... did not fund gain-of-function research to be conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology," Fauci said.

Marshall then pressed Fauci whether "some of the funding" could have "indirectly" helped create the novel coronavirus.

"I'm not sure where that question is going," Fauci replied. "You could do research on something that is benign and has nothing to do with it, and it could indirectly, someday, somehow be involved. So if you want to trap me into saying yes or no, I'm not going to play that game."

Watch the video below.


Private: Rep. Jordan Walks Out Of Judiciary Hearing On Sexual Harassment

Private: Rep. Jordan Walks Out Of Judiciary Hearing On Sexual Harassment

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Thursday walked out of a hearing that featured women who detailed their experiences with being sexually harassed by male judges.

According to Courthouse News reporter Megan Mineiro, Jordan left the House Judiciary Committee hearing on judicial sexual harrassment roughly one hour after it started.

During the hearing, a former clerk for Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt named Olivia Warren detailed her experience in being harassed by her former boss and her fear of having her career derailed by speaking out against it until after Reinhardt passed away in 2018.

“My fear of retaliation is lessened because Judge Reinhardt is no longer on the bench,” she said during the hearing. “My courage is bolstered by the brave women who have come before me.”

As Mineiro notes, Jordan himself has been accused of helping to cover up systemic sexual abuse during his tenure as a wrestling coach at Ohio State University, where many male wrestlers have reported being molested by team doctor Richard Strauss.

Earlier this week, a former OSU wrestling captain told the Ohio House Civil Justice Committee that Jordan had asked him to help cover up the sex abuse scandal.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore
Biographer Foresees ‘Harrowing’ Experience For Trump As Probe Unfolds

Biographer Foresees ‘Harrowing’ Experience For Trump As Probe Unfolds

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump biographer Tim O’Brien predicts that the next few months are going to be very unpleasant for the president, as House Democrats conduct a thorough probe of his personal finances.

Writing in Bloomberg, O’Brien draws on his own experience of getting sued by Trump last decade to discuss the president’s shady financial dealings that could get him into trouble for insurance fraud, among other crimes.

“Scrutiny of Trump’s insurance dealings is just the beginning of what is going to be a long, meandering and possibly harrowing experience for the president, his family, longtime employees, many of his business partners and the White House,” he writes. “Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, attorneys general in Virginia, New York and the District of Columbia, five committees within the House of Representatives and, now, banking and insurance regulators, are all putting the Trump Organization and the president’s financial and political dealings under a wide array of microscopes.”

O’Brien notes that we already know of one shady character in Trump’s orbit who is scheduled to testify before Congress: Felix Sater, the Russian-American former mobster who worked with former “fixer” Michael Cohen to negotiate with Russian officials to build a Trump Tower in Moscow even as he was running for president.

O’Brien describes Sater as a “career criminal” and says he could offer information about not just the Moscow project, but also the Trump Soho hotel project that has been scrutinized as a potential vehicle for international money laundering.

Looking at all these potential targets for investigations, O’Brien concludes that many of the president’s closest allies might turn on him to save themselves from legal jeopardy.

“If Cohen is any indication
 many, if not everybody, at the Trump Organization and elsewhere may decide to protect themselves before they protect the president,” he writes. “Investigators have landed on the money trail.”

IMAGE: Donald Trump with Felix H. Sater (right) and Tevfik Arif at the official unveiling of Trump SoHo in September 2007, when it was still under construction. Credit Mark Von Holden/WireImage

FBI Raids Chicago Office Of Former Trump Tax Lawyer

FBI Raids Chicago Office Of Former Trump Tax Lawyer

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

 

Federal agents on Thursday raided the office of an attorney who in the past has handled the Trump Organization’s taxes.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that “federal agents showed up unannounced at the City Hall office of Finance Committee Chairman Ed Burke, kicked everyone out and papered over the windows Thursday morning.”

Although it is unclear whether the raid was related to President Donald Trump, the raid on Burke’s office is sure to raise eyebrows given that it came on the same day that Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about Trump Tower Moscow.

According to the Sun-Times, Burke did work for the Trump Organization’s taxes for the past twelve years before the two parties severed their business relationship earlier this year.

This past June, the Sun-Times reported that Burke “announced his breakup with Trump in letters filed last month with the Cook County courts and the Illinois State Property Tax Appeal Board” in which he wrote that “‘irreconcilable differences’ have led his firm to stop representing Trump’s company and step aside in five current cases that seek refunds of millions of dollars in property taxes the president’s company has paid.”

Law enforcement officials have so far declined to comment on the nature and purpose of the raid on Burke’s office.

Watch the report below, via ABC 7.

Brad Reed is a news writer at Raw Story.

 

Trump’s Unsecured Phone May Be ‘Largest White House Breach Ever’

Trump’s Unsecured Phone May Be ‘Largest White House Breach Ever’

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

 

President Donald Trump’s decision to keep using an unsecured iPhone, despite the recommendations of national security officials, has left at least one former George W. Bush administration official aghast.

In an interview with Fast Company, former Bush White House chief information officer Theresa Payton said that Trump’s phone “may be the largest White House breach ever.”

In an email sent to Fast Company, Payton said that giving rival foreign powers direct access to the president’s thinking during his personal phone calls with friends would be an unprecedented security disaster.

“This stunning revelation by the NYT is one that has sweeping ramifications for intelligence and the security of the American people,” she said. “America’s most sophisticated peer competitor now has a direct line into the president’s confidential thinking and conversations.”

Revelations about Trump’s phone were first reported by the New York Times on Wednesday, and were leaked by security officials whom the Times described as frustrated “with what they considered the president’s casual approach to electronic security.”

Some Trump administration officials told the Times, however, that they didn’t believe Trump was giving away classified information because “he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities.”

Brad Reed is a news writer at Raw Story. 

 

 

Feds Grant Immunity To Trump Organization’s Chief Finance Exec

Feds Grant Immunity To Trump Organization’s Chief Finance Exec

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

 

Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, was recently granted legal immunity in exchange for his testimony in front of a grand jury as part of the probe of former Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Weisselberg “was granted immunity by federal prosecutors for providing information about Michael Cohen in the criminal investigation into hush-money payments for two women during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

Cohen this week pleaded guilty to multiple felony charges, including making illegal campaign contributions to President Donald Trump’s campaign that were used to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal in exchange for their silence about affairs they’d had with the president.

Despite Cohen’s own knowledge of the Trump Organization’s inner workings, Weisselberg’s cooperation with investigators represents potentially a far greater threat to the president, as he has detailed information about all of his business and finance operations.

Brad Reed is a writer living in Boston. His work has previously appeared in the American Prospect Online, and he blogs frequently at Sadly, No!.

Watch Dutch Journalist Own Trump’s Lying Ambassador

Watch Dutch Journalist Own Trump’s Lying Ambassador

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

 

Pete Hoekstra, the man chosen by President Donald Trump to be America’s ambassador to the Netherlands, was busted blatantly lying about his past statements by a Dutch journalist this week.

During an interview with Dutch reporter Wouter Zwart, Hoekstra was asked about past statements he’d made in 2015 about Muslims in the Netherlands setting fire to politicians and creating “no-go zones” within cities where Dutch police are too frightened to enter.

Hoekstra initially tried to deny ever making such statements.

“I didn’t say that, that is actually an incorrect statement,” Hoesktra insisted. “We would call it fake news. I never said that.”

Zwart then proceeded to play a video clip of Hoekstra saying in 2015 that, “In the Netherlands, there are cars being burned, there are politicians that are being burned
 and yes, there are no-go zones in the Netherlands.”

“You called it ‘fake news,’” the reporter pointed out.

“I didn’t call that fake news,” Hoekstra defensively replied. “I didn’t use those words today
 I don’t think I did.”

Watch the video below.

 

Brad Reed is a writer living in Boston. His work has previously appeared in the American Prospect Online, and he blogs frequently at Sadly, No!.