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With the election over, Republicans are suddenly interested in cutting Social Security
Like clockwork, the party is back to talking about its favorite target.
It’s hard to find many things that 80% of Americans agree on, but they exist. In various polls taken earlier this year, 4 out of 5 Americans said Joe Biden was too old to run for a second term, the government is doing a bad job dealing with migrants at the Mexican border and the cost of prescription drugs is unreasonable.
Oh, and here’s one more area where 80% of Americans concur: Social Security benefits shouldn’t be cut.
On those other issues, politicians are pretty responsive. Biden didn’t run for a second term in the end, after all, and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers will at least pay lip service to the idea that something should be done about the border and prescription drug prices.
But despite its unpopularity, Republicans somehow keep coming back to the idea of cutting Social Security.
In an interview with Fox Business on Tuesday, Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., suggested it was time to make “some hard decisions” to trim the federal budget. “We’ve gotta bring the Democrats in and talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare,” said McCormick, who represents the wealthiest congressional district in Georgia. “There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved and we know how to do it. We just have to have the stomach to actually take those challenges on.”
In the other chamber, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah posted a long thread on the social media platform X about the constitutionality and practicality of Social Security, invoking the classic conservative trope of comparing it to a “Ponzi scheme that’s running out of new investors.”
14. And let’s talk about how this system is set up to fail. The demographic shift? More retirees, fewer workers. It’s almost fair to compare it to a Ponzi scheme that’s running out of new investors.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) December 3, 2024
“We need real, genuine reform,” he wrote. “Within the Social Security system, Americans should be able to invest in their own future, and not be shackled by the worst parts of this outdated, mismanaged system.”
Lee’s thread was then amplified by X owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who has been tasked with running a “government efficiency” commission for President-elect Donald Trump and has repeatedly hinted that effort might include changes to entitlement programs.
In a speech at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally during the campaign, Musk said he wanted to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, which would amount to about 30% of spending. Since Social Security is the largest single program in the budget, that would seem to indicate it might be a target, especially since Musk also said that “everyone’s going to have to take a haircut” under his plans.
So, would Trump try to cut Social Security? It’s hard to say. Over the years, he has staked out every possible position on Social Security — sometimes within hours of each other.
In a 2000 book, he too used the line about Social Security being “a huge Ponzi scheme,” called for raising the retirement age to 70 and proposed privatizing the program. He repeated the latter view in a 2004 appearance on MSNBC, where he called Social Security’s solvency “a huge problem right now.”
But when Trump ran in the Republican presidential primary in 2016, he cast himself as the program’s protector, saying “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican.”
As president, he continued to insist that he would not touch Social Security benefits even as he took actions that indicated he might. Once he claimed on Twitter that his fiscal 2021 budget would not do that just hours before it was released, showing that it did, in fact, include proposed cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income benefits. Or when he told CNBC that maybe he’d cut entitlement programs and then tried to walk it back the next day.
So if Republicans — or Musk — decide to propose changes to Social Security benefits, it’s possible that he might go along with it.
The question is what happens next. If history is any guide, any effort would run right into a brick wall of opposition. President George W. Bush after all, proposed privatizing Social Security after he won a second term in 2004. In a press conference shortly after that victory, Bush declared that he had earned “political capital” in the election and intended to spend it. He made it the centerpiece of his State of the Union address and barnstormed the country. And the more he talked, the less popular the idea became. Within a few months, the plan died quietly in Congress. In the 2006 midterms, Democrats flipped both houses of Congress without a single incumbent losing.
Trump wouldn’t even start with Bush’s level of single-minded focus on the issue, either, as he’ll be too busy promoting his other plans to deport millions who are in the country illegally, restructure the federal government by fiat and levy tariffs right and left. With narrow majorities in the House and Senate, just a handful of Republicans could tank any proposal, and Social Security has one of the strongest lobbying and grassroots advocacy efforts in Washington.
But while Trump may not end up cutting Social Security directly, his other plans may lead to cuts in the end.
The nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated earlier this year that undocumented immigrants paid $25 billion in Social Security taxes, so mass deportations may cut revenue. Another report from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that deportations, tariffs and even Trump’s proposal to end income taxes on Social Security benefits would all worsen the program’s finances, potentially leading to a shortfall by 2031.
Trump will be out of office by then. But Republicans will likely still be calling for cuts — and they may get them.
Harmeet Dhillon was chosen by the president-elect to replace Kristen Clarke on the Justice Department’s civil rights efforts.
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Monday that he plans to nominate a conservative California attorney to lead a critical division of the Department of Justice.
Harmeet Dhillon, a former vice chairwoman of the California GOP and a national committeewoman for the Republican National Committee, was selected by Trump to serve as assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department. She would replace Kristen Clarke, who became the first woman and first Black woman to run the division in 2021.
Trump, who described Dhillon as one of the “top Election lawyers” in the country in his Truth Social announcement, said that she would have a large role in voting rights enforcement.
“Throughout her career, Harmeet has stood up consistently to protect our cherished Civil Liberties, including taking on Big Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers,” he wrote.
Dhillon combated stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. She filed several lawsuits against government-level regulations, arguing there was overreach. The lawsuits Dhillon filed came after Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom became the first governor to issue statewide stay-at-home orders to shut down nonessential activities and interests to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
In 2018, Dhillon founded the conservative nonprofit The Center for American Liberty, which has filed lawsuits challenging vaccine requirements and trans-inclusive school policies. Most notably, Dhillon currently represents Chloe Cole, a young activist who sued Kaiser Permanente in California after she detransitioned from male to female. Cole has rallied alongside Republican politicians and conservative media figures, and has testified in support of dozens of state laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for trans youth.
Dhillon is highly critical of blue states that aim to uphold and protect rights for transgender people in light of ongoing legislative attacks. She said Maine’s “shield” law, which protects reproductive health care providers and trans people, is “unconstitutional” and expressed concerns about future protections in California.
A staunch opponent of abortion herself, the attorney also unsuccessfully represented anti-abortion activist David Daleiden, who in 2016 used a fake driver’s license to pose as a biomedical company executive and tried to buy fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood, in an effort to accuse the health care provider of selling tissue for profit.
Dhillon, who was born in India and is a practicing Sikh, has faced pushback from fellow Republicans due to questions of her faith. After she announced in 2022 that she would challenge RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel for her position, several members of the RNC circulated a video of Dhillon opening a 2016 Republican National Convention with a Sikh prayer. In a letter to Alabama Republicans in 2023 responding to the incident, Dhillon addressed concerns about her faith and slammed McDaniel’s leadership. Alabama Republican Chris Horn questioned how Dhillon’s religion would impact policy to NBC. McDaniel condemned attacks on religion but told Politico her allies questioned how Dhillon’s faith would impact the party.
Last year, former Fox News host and conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson hired Dhillon to represent him in a gender discrimination lawsuit by his former producer, Abby Grossberg. The ensuing settlement resulted in Fox paying Grossberg $12 million.
“I’m extremely honored by President Trump’s nomination to assist with our nation’s civil rights agenda,” Dhillon said in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter). “It has been my dream to be able to serve our great country, and I am so excited to be part of an incredible team of lawyers led by @PamBondi. I cannot wait to get to work!”
The president-elect appeared very confused about how American citizenship is conferred.
In a freewheeling interview with NBC News Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump offered a head-scratching explanation for his plan to wage an attack on birthright citizenship.
“Did you know, if somebody sets a foot — just a foot, one foot, you don’t need two — on our land, congratulations, you are now a citizen of the United States of America,” Trump said, when discussing birthright citizenship.
“Yes, we’re going to end that, because it’s ridiculous,” he added.
Trump appeared to describe a hypothetical scenario in which a woman would give birth to an infant who — either capable of walking at birth or helped along by someone eager to win a bet — would set one foot on American soil and the other in either Mexico or Canada.
It is also possible Trump was imagining an infant hopping or standing on one leg. Neither scenario is plausible.
Trump also repeatedly asked whether the interviewer, Kristen Welker of “Meet the Press,” knew that the United States was the only country that conferred citizenship by birthright.
“We’re the only country that has it, you know,” Trump said. “You know we’re the only country that has it.”
Birthright citizenship is commonly recognized in the Americas, including in Canada and Mexico. Also known by its Latin legal term as “jus soli,” it is the concept of conferring citizenship by birth in a given country. Most countries instead recognize “jus sanguinis,” which instead confers citizenship based on the nationality of a person’s parents.
Welker did not challenge Trump’s utterly wrong description of how birthright citizenship works or that the United States is not alone in recognizing it. But she asked whether Trump intended to enact his proposed change through executive action.
“Well, if we can, through executive action,” Trump said. “I was going to do it through executive action, but then we had to fix COVID first, to be honest with you.”
Birthright citizenship is protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The president cannot use executive action to overturn a constitutional amendment, though legal experts expect the Trump administration to challenge the long-settled legal interpretation through the courts.
Trump has spent significant time in southern Florida, which is home to a large Cuban-American community.
He likely came up with this weird description of birthright citizenship by free-associating the issue with the now-defunct policy of allowing Cuban migrants to stay within the United States and pursue citizenship upon touching American soil. The policy was known as “wet-foot, dry-foot.”
During this year’s presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly described immigrants as coming from jails and mental institutions. He was likely resurrecting assertions he heard during the era of the Mariel boatlift four decades ago.
Trump mocks the United States’ northern ally
In a post just after midnight on Truth Social, Trump took aim at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a mocking reference, calling him “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.”
The comment, a throwback to Trump’s past suggestion that Canada might become the 51st U.S. state if they can’t handle his tariffs, is an insult to both Trudeau and Canada.
Trump recently posted an AI image of himself looking into Canada as if to annex it. Trump’s midnight post, claiming to look forward to future discussions on tariffs and trade with “Governor Trudeau,” further stoked tensions with a key ally and makes one question his diplomatic judgment.
Trump’s post undermines the United States’ relationship with Canada. Calling the Canadian leader a “Governor” belittles the sovereignty of a close neighbor and trading partner, and further feeds into the narrative of disrespect that Trump has often displayed toward foreign leaders.
The United States and Canada share deep economic, cultural, and geopolitical ties, and statements like this can jeopardize decades of cooperation. Trump is proving once again he will be an embarrassment to the United States.
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