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    Texas Doctor Who Filed $118 Million in Fraudulent Medical Claims Gets 10 Years in Prison

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    Jorge Zamora-Quezada falsely diagnosed patients with a chronic disease and subjected them to unnecessary treatments to help fund his lavish lifestyle, officials said.For nearly 20 years, a Texas doctor falsely diagnosed patients as having a chronic disease, administered unnecessary, toxic treatments and filed more than $118 million in fraudulent health insurance claims to fund his lavish lifestyle, which included a private jet, luxury cars and high-end properties, prosecutors said.The doctor, Jorge Zamora-Quezada, 68, of Mission, Texas, was sentenced to 10 years in prison this week, according to the Justice Department.From 2000 to 2018, he falsely diagnosed patients with rheumatoid arthritis and administered dangerous, medically unnecessary treatments to defraud federal and private health insurance companies, the Justice Department said.Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease that causes a person’s immune system to attack healthy tissue. Some of Mr. Zamora-Quezada’s patients were as young as 13, the Justice Department said.Mr. Zamora-Quezada’s medical license was canceled in 2021, according to Texas Medical Board records.His scheme funded what prosecutors described in court documents as his “lavish and opulent lifestyle,” with properties across the United States and Mexico, as well as a private jet and a Maserati that he used to travel between his offices in the Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The US credit rating has been downgraded. But there’s an easy fix for our debt | Robert Reich

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      On Friday, the credit rating of the United States was downgraded. Moody’s, the ratings firm, announced that the government’s rising debt levels would grow further if the Trump Republican package of new tax cuts were enacted. This makes lending to the US riskier.Moody’s is the third of the three major credit-rating agencies to downgrade the credit rating of the United States.So-called “bond vigilantes” have already been selling the US government’s debt, as the Republican tax package moves through Congress. They’re expected to sell even more, driving long-term interest rates even higher to make up for the growing risk of holding US debt.Some rightwing Republicans in Congress are using the Moody’s downgrade to justify deeper spending cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs that lower-income Americans depend on.But, hello? There’s a far easier way to reduce the federal debt. Just end the Trump tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy and big corporations – and instead raise taxes on them.I’m old enough to remember when the US’s super-rich financed the government with their tax payments. Under Dwight Eisenhower – hardly a leftwing radical – the highest marginal tax rate was 91%. (Even after all tax credits and deductions were figured in, the super-rich paid way over half their top marginal incomes in taxes.)But since the Reagan, George W Bush and Trump 1 tax cuts, tax rates on the super-rich have plummeted.So instead of financing the government with their taxes, the super-rich have been financing the US government by lending it money.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion(You may have heard that the US’s debt is held mainly by foreigners. Wrong. More than 70% of it is held by Americans – and most of them are wealthy.)This means that an ever-increasing portion of the taxes from the rest of us are dedicated to paying ever-increasing interest payments on the debt – payments that go largely to the super-rich.So when the debt of the United States is downgraded because Trump Republicans are planning another big tax cut mainly benefiting the rich and big corporations, most Americans could end up paying in three different ways:

      They’ll pay even more interest on the growing debt – to the super-rich.

      They’ll pay higher interest rates on all other long-term debt. (As higher rates on treasury bonds waft through the economy, they raise borrowing costs on everything from mortgages to auto loans.)

      The debt crisis will give Republicans even more excuse to do what they’re always wanting to do: slash safety nets. So many Americans could lose benefits they rely on, such as Medicaid and food stamps.
      The “bond vigilantes” are not the cause of this absurdity. Neither is Moody’s or the other credit-rating agencies. Nor, for that matter, is the growing national debt.What’s the underlying cause? Just follow the money. It’s the growing political power of the super-rich and big corporations to lower their taxes at the expense of most Americans.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      This Mother’s Day, lets talk about why birth rates are really declining | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      Mother’s Day is here, and while Donald Trump may seem an unlikely celebrant of the occasion, his administration has recently floated several proposals to incentivize motherhood – or, more accurately, giving birth. There’s the $5,000 “baby bonus” for every American mother, free classes educating women on their menstrual cycles and a National Medal of Motherhood for moms who have at least six children. (Want to guess which regime also awarded such a medal?)As usual, the president has offered ridiculous solutions to a very real problem. He’s certainly right that every American should be able to afford to raise children, and that programs like social security depend on stable demographics. But of course, every other action he has taken to undermine gender equality would suggest that this sudden interest in the wellbeing of mothers is less than sincere. That’s exactly why progressives have an opening to break up what the Republican party believes to be its ideological monopoly on pro-family policies.The roots of the fertility crisis engage the bread-and-butter issues that have long been the domain of Democrats. US birthrates have hit a record low not because the nation has become “almost pathologically anti-child”, as JD Vance asserted to the New York Times. Instead, surveys have shown that would-be parents want to own a home, repay student debt and have money for childcare before starting a family. Yet the average age of a homebuyer has climbed to 56, almost double what it was 40 years ago. And 43% of young people currently carry student debt, compared with 28% in 1993. The problem isn’t lack of interest – it’s too much interest being paid on record high loans.But most of the Trump administration’s floated fixes are unoriginal swipes from the undemocratic leaders they admire. In 2017, Vladimir Putin declared a “Decade of Childhood in Russia”, an innocent name for a program that calls for everything from defending so-called family values to encouraging conjugal trysts during workplace coffee breaks to censoring “childfree propaganda”. Meanwhile, Viktor Orbán has dedicated 5% of Hungary’s GDP to pronatalist policies, which include nationalized IVF services and lifetime tax exemptions for mothers with three children. These men are carrying on an authoritarian tradition begun by the original strongman, Benito Mussolini, whose “Battle for Births” portended literal battles that decreased Europe’s population by 20 million people.That’s why those who really care about real solutions would be wise to start offering their own plans, and, in fact, some already have. What the Trump administration didn’t plagiarize from autocrats, they took from progressives, which is why “baby bonuses” sounds an awful lot like the “baby bonds” proposed in 2021 by Senators Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker and Representative Ayanna Pressley. The legislation would put $1,000 in a savings account at birth for every American child. The Biden-era American Rescue Plan also almost doubled the child tax credit, which nearly halved the child poverty rate. Though making that expansion permanent received bipartisan support, it was ultimately killed by the centrist triangulating of Joe Manchin.Four years later, Democrats have the chance to embrace a genuinely progressive agenda that doubles as a pro-family platform. Bernie Sanders has long called for cancelling all student debt, Elizabeth Warren has campaigned for universal childcare, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the first politicians on Capitol Hill to offer three months of paid parental leave to her entire staff. The Congressional Progressive caucus has also called for a whole raft of policies that would lower the cost of living, from expanding Medicaid to investing $250bn in affordable housing. They understand that real relief will come not from handing out medals but from having the mettle to fight for working families.Still, even if Democrats manage a progressive populist revival not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it probably wouldn’t be enough to lift birthrates. In social democracies like Finland and Sweden – which offer 13 months of paid parental leave and cover 90% of preschool costs, respectively – fertility remains below replacement levels.Does that indicate the problem may be more fundamental? One sociologist, Dr Karen Benjamin Guzzo, has attributed this dilemma to apprehension: “People really need to feel confident about the future.” But whether it’s 60% of young people feeling very worried about the climate crisis, or 80% of new mothers feeling lonely, or 90% of voters feeling that American politics is broken, the state of the world doesn’t seem too conducive to domestic bliss. The right’s response to this anxiety is embodied by Elon Musk, who keeps siring children with women he meets on X to create a “legion-level” brood “before the apocalypse”.To help avert said apocalypse, what should be on offer are authentically family-friendly policies that benefit parents and non-parents alike. In doing so, there’s a chance to persuade Americans that the next generation still might have a brighter future than the last. Or, at the very least, that progressives have a more compelling vision for American families than the one whose budget is about to take billions from children’s education, food and healthcare.It’s one thing to incentivize giving birth. Americans deserve leaders who will fight for those kids after they’re born.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times More

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      Republicans Writing Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Face Risks on Medicaid

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      Representatives from swing districts face tough votes as soon as next week, when key House panels are scheduled to consider legislation that would cut popular programs to pay for President Trump’s agenda.Gabe Evans, then a Republican state lawmaker in Colorado, defeated a Democratic member of Congress in November by less than 1 percentage point — just 2,449 votes — writing his ticket to Washington.Now Mr. Evans, 39, is helping to write legislation that could cement his own ticket back home.The first-term congressman, whose swing district just north of Denver includes 151,749 Medicaid recipients, sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Republican budget resolution that lays the groundwork for sweeping legislation to enact President Trump’s domestic agenda instructs the panel, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, to slash spending by $880 billion over the next decade to help pay for a large tax cut. That number is impossible to reach without substantially reducing the cost of Medicaid, the government program that provides health insurance for lower-income Americans.As Republicans in Congress struggle to coalesce around the core pieces of what Mr. Trump calls his “one big, beautiful bill,” Mr. Evans and other G.O.P. lawmakers from some of the most competitive districts in the country are facing committee votes next week to approve cuts to popular programs that could come back to haunt them politically.And Democrats are gleeful at the prospect of Republican incumbents going on the record supporting the effort.“These members of Congress won with fewer votes than the number of people in their district on Medicaid,” said Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist and a former spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Voting for this is like being the captain of the Titanic and deciding to intentionally hit the iceberg.”The group includes Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Republican of Iowa, who also sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee and is on even shakier ground than Mr. Evans, despite having warded off a challenger multiple times. Last year, Ms. Miller-Meeks, who represents 132,148 Medicaid recipients, won her seat by 0.2 percent, or 799 votes. Her local office in Davenport has been besieged by demonstrators concerned about spending cuts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrats make long-shot effort to stop Trump cuts to Medicaid and Snap

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      House Democrats are making a long-shot attempt to stop Republicans from downsizing federal safety net programs including Medicaid to offset the costs of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and tax cuts.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, on Tuesday announced that his lawmakers are circulating a petition which, should a majority of the chamber sign on to it, would force a vote on legislation preventing cuts to the Medicaid health insurance program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).Known as a discharge petition, the effort faces long odds in the GOP-led chamber. Republican leaders have recently moved to stop such petitions, and while several Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns about some of the cuts being considered to pay for Trump’s agenda, they still generally support it.“House Republicans are determined to jam a reckless and extreme budget down the throats of the American people that will enact the largest cut to Medicaid and the largest cut to Snap in American history,” Jeffries told reporters.“All we need are four Republicans to do the right thing. Stand up for Medicaid and stand up for Snap, so they can stand up for the American people and we can stop the devastating cuts that Republicans are proposing.”Trump has called on Congress’s Republican majorities to send him what he has dubbed “one big, beautiful bill”, which is expected to extend tax cuts enacted during his first term, pay for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and potentially address other campaign promises, such as ending the taxation of tips, overtime and social security payments.The GOP plans to pass the bill using Congress’s reconciliation procedure, which requires only simple majorities in both the House and Senate.Some Republicans have blanched at the possibility of deep cuts to Medicaid and Snap. Under a budget framework that applies to the House, the former program could lose as much as $880bn, while the latter could lose $220bn, both major cuts that are expected to have far-reaching effects.Democrats are hoping to seize on their discontent to attract the small number of Republican signatures needed for their petition to succeed.“All of this poses a question for those House Republicans who like to call themselves moderate,” said Katherine Clark, the Democratic whip of the House of Representatives.“Here’s a chance for you, your friends, your fellow moderates, to show you actually care for your constituents. It only takes a handful of Republicans to stop this, just a few to protect Medicaid and save working families from losing their healthcare and going hungry.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDischarge petitions rarely gather enough signatures, and when they do, House Republican leadership moves forcefully to render them moot.Last month, a small number of Republicans signed on with Democrats to a petition that forced a vote on a measure to allow new parents to vote by proxy in the House. Republican leaders inserted language into a must-pass procedural motion to stop the petition, prompting several GOP lawmakers to join with Democrats in voting down the motion, after which leadership recessed the chamber early. The matter was later resolved by a compromise between the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Anna Paulina Luna, the Republican representative who was leading the petition.The discharge petition to protect Snap and Medicaid comes after the Democratic National Committee last week announced plans to hold town halls and rally voters in the districts of four Republican lawmakers, with the goal of encouraging them to vote against the forthcoming reconciliation bill.Seven of 11 House committees have written up their section of the bill, which Johnson said he hopes to pass through the chamber by the 26 May Memorial Day holiday. More

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      Elon Musk and Social Security’s Effort to Curb Illegal Immigration

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      As Elon Musk continues to argue that Social Security drives illegal immigration, a new effort at the agency aims to curb it.One hallmark of Elon Musk’s 12 weeks in government has been his focus on Social Security.He has sent one of his closest advisers to work at the Social Security Administration. He has falsely insisted that the program is rife with fraud. And he has depicted the entitlement as a tool — a “giant magnet,” to be specific — that he says entices illegal immigrants to come to the United States.That last part has turned Social Security into a major focal point of Musk’s unfounded belief that Democrats have allowed immigrants into the United States as part of a scheme to tilt the electorate in their favor.A team of my colleagues has reported that Musk is now driving big changes at the Social Security Administration that have braided aspects of his rhetoric about the agency directly into policy. The agency is placing certain immigrants — people who are very much alive — on the agency’s list of dead people, cutting them off from crucial financial services in an effort to push them to leave the country.I called my colleague Alexandra Berzon to talk about this reporting, and she explained that, according to the White House’s own accounting, the targeted migrants did not receive much in the way of government benefits — and none of them received Social Security.The new effort, she explained, is less about cost-cutting than it is about getting the Social Security Administration into the business of immigration enforcement, a push that has deeply alarmed current and former employees of the agency.Explain to me what you and our colleagues discovered when reporting this story. How is the Trump administration using Social Security as a tool for immigration policy?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mehmet Oz confirmed by US Senate to lead Medicare and Medicaid

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      Former heart surgeon and TV pitchman Dr Mehmet Oz was confirmed on Thursday to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).Oz became the agency’s administrator in a party-line 53-45 vote.The 64-year-old will manage health insurance programs for roughly half the country, with oversight of Medicare, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage. He steps into the new role as Congress is debating cuts to the Medicaid program, which provides coverage to millions of poor and disabled Americans.Oz has not said yet whether he would oppose such cuts to the government-funded program, instead offering a vision of promoting healthier lifestyles, integrating artificial intelligence and telehealth into the system, and rethinking rural healthcare delivery.During a hearing last month, he told senators that he did favor work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but that paperwork shouldn’t be used to reaffirm that they are working or to block people from staying enrolled.Oz, who worked for years as a respected heart surgeon at Columbia University, also noted that doctors dislike Medicaid for its relatively low payments and some don’t want to take those patients.He said that when Medicaid eligibility was expanded without improving resources for doctors, that made care options even thinner for the program’s core patients, which include children, pregnant people and people with disabilities.“We have to make some important decisions to improve the quality of care,” he said.Oz has formed a close relationship with his new boss, Robert F Kennedy Jr. He’s hosted the health secretary and his inner circle regularly at his home in Florida. He’s leaned into Kennedy’s campaign to “make America healthy again” (Maha), an effort to redesign the nation’s food supply, reject vaccine mandates and cast doubt on some long-established scientific research.The former TV show host talks often about the importance of a healthy diet, aligning closely with Kennedy’s views.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Oz has faced some criticism for promoting unproven vitamin supplements and holistic treatments – staples of the “Maha movement” – he’s regularly encouraged Americans to get vaccinated.Oz will take over the CMS days after the agency was spared from the type of deep cuts that Kennedy ordered at other public health agencies. Thousands of staffers at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health are out of a job after mass layoffs that started on Tuesday.The CMS is expected to lose about 300 staffers, including those who worked on minority health and to shrink the cost of healthcare delivery. More

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      Democrats train fire on Musk as unelected billionaire dips in popularity

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      For most of the 17-minute interview, Elon Musk stuck to a script. He was just a tech guy on a mission to “eliminate waste and fraud” from government.His slash-and-burn cost-cutting crusade was making “good progress actually”, he told the Fox Business commentator Larry Kudlow on Monday, despite sparking a backlash that has reverberated far beyond Washington.“Really, I just don’t want America to go bankrupt,” he said.But then Kudlow asked Musk to look forward. Would the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) still be in place in a year? He thought so – his assignment wasn’t quite complete. Musk, the world’s richest man, then pointed to social security, a widely popular federal program that provides monthly benefits to retirees and people with disabilities, and other social safety net programs: “Most of the federal spending is entitlements. That’s the big one to eliminate.”For weeks, Donald Trump and Republicans have insisted that social security, Medicaid or Medicare would not “be touched”. Now Musk was suggesting the programs would be a primary target. Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, Democrats pounced.“The average social security recipient in this country receives $65 a day. They have to survive on $65 a day. But you want to take a chainsaw to social security, when Elon Musk and his tens of billions of dollars of government contracts essentially makes at least $8m a day from the taxpayers,” Hakeem Jeffries, the US House minority leader, said in a floor speech the following day. “If you want to uncover waste, fraud or abuse, start there.”As the second Trump era comes into focus, Democrats have found a new villain: an “unelected billionaire” whose bravado – and sinking popularity – they believe may offer their party a path out of the political wilderness.“There’s nowhere in America where it is popular to cut disease research, to gut Medicaid and to turn off social security,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist. “So it’s hard to see a place where what Musk is doing for Trump doesn’t become an albatross for Republicans.”The White House has championed Doge’s work while reiterating that Trump would “protect” social security and other entitlement programs. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.The Social Security Administration , which serves more than 70 million Americans, has announced plans to reduce its workforce by more than 10% and close dozens of offices nationwide as part of Doge’s federal overhaul. Officials with the group have been installed at the agency since early last month.Despite mounting criticism of Musk, the president has embraced his beleaguered ally, who spent close to $300m helping elect him to the White House. This week, Trump hailed Musk as a “patriot” as he showcased Teslas from the south lawn of the White House. The president selected a red sedan, hoping to boost the electric car company, which has suffered a sharp decline in sales and stock prices since its chief executive launched his Doge operation. The White House has said that if conflicts of interest arise, “Elon will excuse himself from those contracts”.But Musk and his chainsaw-wielding approach to downsizing government is playing a starring role in early Democratic ads and fundraising appeals. Progressive activists have staged “nobody elected Elon” protests across the country while other groups are targeting Tesla showrooms and dealerships. On a “fighting oligarchy” tour across the country, Senator Bernie Sanders pointed to Musk’s growing political influence as a central threat to American democracy.“Most American people, they can’t name us. They don’t know who Chuck Schumer is, but they do know what this administration and Elon Musk and the GOP are planning for them,” Katherine Clark, the House minority whip, said on Friday. “It’s why you’re seeing this uproar in town halls.”While Democrats have much to say about Musk, they are less sure of how to stop him.Many of Doge’s actions have been halted or stopped in the courts. This week two federal judges ordered government agencies to rehire tens of thousands of probationary employees who were fired as part of Doge’s purge of the federal workforce.Locked out of power in Washington, Democrats are under enormous pressure to use any leverage they have to block Trump and Musk. A Republican-authored bill to fund federal agencies through September and avert a shutdown fiercely divided Democrats this week. House Democrats and progressive activists erupted in anger at Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, who ultimately relented and helped pass the measure rather than risk a funding lapse and, in his words, give Musk and Doge an opportunity to “exploit the crisis for maximum destruction”.Public polling underlines Democrats’ interest in Musk. A new CNN survey found that just 35% of Americans held a positive view of the billionaire Trump adviser, a full 10 percentage points lower than the president. The poll also found that he is notably better known and more unpopular than the vice-president, JD Vance.More than six in 10 Americans said Musk had neither the right experience nor the judgment to carry out a unilateral overhaul of the federal government, though views broke sharply along partisan lines. Roughly the same share said they were worried the reductions would go “too far”, resulting in the loss of critical government programs.A survey conducted by the left-leaning Navigator Research polling firm late last month found that views of Doge as a standalone cost-cutting initiative were marginally favorable, in line with other polls that have found Americans are broadly supportive of its stated mission to root out waste and improve efficiency. But there are signs Americans don’t like the approach or implementation so far.When the effort was framed as “Elon Musk’s Doge”, views turned sharply more negative. The poll also captured the far-reaching impact of the cuts: 20% say they or someone they know has lost access to a federal service, 19% say they or someone they know has lost access to a federal grant, and 17% say they or someone they know has quit or been laid off from a federal government job.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Musk is the face of everything that people are worried about in the Trump administration,” Ferguson said, adding: “To a lot of people, putting Elon Musk in charge of protecting the middle class is like putting Jeffrey Dahmer in charge of protecting a morgue.”Democrats believe Musk’s comments on entitlement programs are particularly potent – the world’s wealthiest man advocating for steep cuts to programs designed to help retirees and vulnerable Americans.In the Fox Business interview, Musk claimed the programs were rife with waste and fraud, suggesting as much as $600bn to $700bn – or nearly a quarter of their budget – could to be cut. Federal watchdogs have long identified improper spending as a problem, but Musk’s figure exceeds their estimates.Musk has derided social security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time”. As evidence of widespread fraud, Musk repeated a debunked theory, favored by Trump, that social security benefits are being paid to dead centenarians. The head of the agency has rejected the premise. Democrats have warned that Trump and Musk were using false or exaggerated claims of fraud as a “prelude” to slash the program or privatize it, as many conservatives have long desired.After Musk’s comments aired, the White House swiftly issued a “fact check” insisting that Musk had only advocated for eliminating waste and highlighted several occasions in which Trump has vowed to protect Americans’ benefits.Republicans also rushed to clarify Musk’s comments. “Look, Elon Musk is a brainiac with an IQ that I cannot even fathom. He is not a master of artful language,” Mark Alford, a Republican representative of Missouri, said on CNN. “We are not going to eliminate social security, Medicare and Medicaid. That’s sheer nonsense.”It was a rare break with Musk, whom Republicans have been loath to cross, well aware that he not only has the president’s full support and ear but a fortune to squash any dissent within the ranks. During Trump’s address to Congress earlier this month, Republicans gave Musk a standing ovation as the president heaped praise on his work. They publicly warn that Democrats oppose Musk’s fraud-and-waste removal efforts at their own political peril.Yet there are signs that Republicans are beginning to worry. Despite Trump’s close alliance with Musk, even he seemed to indicate it was time to rein him in. “We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet’,” the president wrote in a social media post.House Republicans have reportedly been advised not to hold in-person town halls after several widely publicized confrontations with constituents furious over loss of government jobs and services. At the few meetings that did take place this weekend, constituents confronted Republican members of Congress with their concerns about possible cuts to social security.Republicans are weighing deep cuts to entitlement programs as a way to offset the cost of extending Trump’s sweeping tax cuts aimed largely at the wealthy. Trump has praised the House plan.“The Republican party at this point has wrapped both arms around the third rail and is holding on as the electricity flows,” said Ben Wikler, the chair of the Democratic party in Wisconsin, where a contest next month will provide an early test of the party’s anti-Musk strategy.On Thursday night, Wikler hosted a People v Musk grassroots event to discuss the billionaire’s impact on the 1 April state supreme court race, which will determine the balance of power between conservative and liberal justices on Wisconsin’s highest bench. Musk has spent millions of dollars through his America Pac in an effort to tip the scales in favor of Brad Schimel, a county judge and former Republican attorney general. Democrats are supporting Susan Crawford, a county judge and former attorney for Planned Parenthood.Wikler said Musk’s ascendancy in Washington – and his influence in the race – has turned liberal voters in the state from “concerned to panicked to outraged with the heat of 1,000 suns”.“If Susan Crawford wins this race, and Musk and Schimel lose,” he said, “then that will be a big bat signal in the sky to Democrats everywhere that fighting back is not only the right thing to do, it’s good politics.” More

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      Musk’s entitlement remarks show Trumpworld can’t keep its story straight | Austin Sarat

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      The Trump administration is setting records and shattering norms in many ways, including in its almost daily policy flip-flops and rhetorical missteps. The latest started on Monday, when Elon Musk torched Trumpism by trumpeting the need to make cuts in federal entitlement programs.He did not clearly say whether or how those cuts would affect Medicaid, Medicare and social security benefits. But he was clear that those programs will be on his target list.Entitlements are “the big one to eliminate,” he told Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser during Donald Trump’s first term, on Fox Business Network. “Maybe half a trillion or $600, $700bn a year.”Throughout the 2024 campaign, the president promised not to cut social security and Medicare benefits. Even so, Musk appeared to tee up changes to those programs.He called entitlements “a mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters”.“That’s why,” he continued, “Democrats are so upset about this situation. If we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave and they will lose voters.”As the AP notes in its report on the Musk-Kudlow interview: “The allegation echoed the ‘great replacement’ theory which claims that politicians are trying to expand their power by reshaping the country’s racial demographics.” Pinning the blame for entitlement cuts on undocumented immigrants is a Trumpist way of stoking the base, even as Musk lays the groundwork for making the lives of many Maga loyalists more difficult.The red meat Musk tossed to hardcore, anti-immigrant voters will not long be satisfactory if he follows through on cuts to programs on which many of them depend. In addition, Musk’s musings about entitlements will drive home the widening split between its plutocratic and populist wings.Last month, Steve Bannon, representing the populist wing of the Maga movement, gave a taste of what is to come in Trumpland when he warned that Republicans making cuts to Medicaid would affect members of Trump’s fan club.As the New Republic puts it: “On the Thursday episode of War Room, while gushing over massive government spending cuts, Bannon warned that cutting Medicaid specifically would prove unpopular among the working-class members of Trump’s base, who make up some of the 80 million people who get their healthcare through that program.”“Medicaid,” Bannon warned, “you got to be careful, because a lot of Maga’s on Medicaid. I’m telling you, if you don’t think so, you are deeeeeead wrong. Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. Just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.”And it is not just Medicaid that has strong support. Polls have “consistently shown that the American public strongly supports social security, across party and demographic lines”, per the National Academy of Social Insurance.A 2024 survey found “87 percent of Americans agree that social security should remain a priority for the nation no matter the state of budget deficits, and this support holds strong across party affiliation. Ninety per cent of Democrats, 86% of Republicans, and 88% of independents support keeping social security a priority.”In the wake of the November election, a Pew survey reported: “Republicans and Democrats have long differed over the size and scope of government, and that continued that continued in this election cycle.” But “large majorities of Trump (77%) and Harris supporters (83%) opposed any reductions in the social security program.”The president prepared the way for Musk’s remarks during his recent address to Congress when he delivered a litany of false claims about people receiving social security benefits well beyond anyone’s capacity to live. Musk followed suit with what he said about undocumented immigrants getting federal entitlement benefits.The fact is that if they work, they pay into the social security system, but they are not eligible to receive benefits. As KFF, a health policy research, polling and news organization, explains: “Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to enroll in federally funded coverage including Medicaid, Chip, or Medicare.”We got a glimpse of the trouble that Musk caused in Magaworld when, the day after his remarks, the White House tried to clean up the mess. It issued a press release saying: “The Trump administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits. President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again).”Then, never missing a chance to bash the media, the White House insisted: “Elon Musk didn’t say that, either. The press is lying again.” The press release also insisted that Musk was only talking about plans to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.The Musk-led assault on the federal government may talk a lot about doing so, but that is a cover for a bigger project. As professor Jack Schneider observes: “We all know that there are ways our government could become more efficient or more effective. But this project isn’t really about trimming the fat – it’s about cutting you loose.”The Trump-Musk project is also designed to cripple government agencies, deprive government of the funds it needs to deliver necessary services, and further erode the public’s trust in government.That is why Musk has not been shy about denigrating the entire social security system, calling it a “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all times”. The White House effort to whitewash Musk’s faux pas is another example of the continuing saga of its baffling inability to get its story straight.The president may think that he gets more than he loses from his “billionaire in a china-shop” sidekick. But, in the end, while Trump may survive his association with the Musk, Trumpism may not.

      Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 hundred books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More