1. United States
2. Mass.
3. Letter

Trump & Musk are weaponizing Social Security. For nearly 90 years, the SSA has stood above partisan politics. SSA focused on its mission to deliver hard-earned benefits to every American, regardless of party. Official communications channels, such as press releases, never endorsed or criticized a politician. Indeed, the one time a president tried to politicize SS, he was forced to back down. Before benefits were automatically indexed to offset the rise in inflation, Congress would vote for increases that the president signed into law. Those benefits were accompanied by straightforward notices, stating that Congress had passed, & the president had signed into law, the enclosed increase. Just prior to the 1972 election, President Richard Nixon explored the idea of substituting an insert with his signature & photo, hoping to imply that he alone was responsible for the increase. The SS Commissioner threatened to publicly resign, & Nixon backed down. Trump & Elon Musk are throwing Social Security’s long-standing tradition of neutrality in the trash. With their hand-picked commissioner now in place, we must be more vigilant than ever. The SSA announced that it would be posting its official announcements on Elon Musk’s for-profit social media platform (X), alongside the platform’s paid advertisements. Consistent with that declaration, SSA’s official account posted a thread to Musk’s platform that began “Former President Joe Biden is lying to Americans.” This thread was filled with misleading info & used offensive, politically charged language, including “illegal aliens.” Actually, undocumented immigrants do not & cannot receive SS. In fact, SSA has determined that undocumented workers have been subsidizing the rest of us to the tune of $25 billion a year, since many contribute (under fake SS#s) but never receive a penny of their earned benefits. Like the rest of SSA, the agency’s official comms are paid for by the American people’s SS contributions. Usually, SSA is very efficient, spending less than a penny of every $ contributed on administrative expenses. The Trump-Musk regime lying to us & using our money to do it. This is just one of many ways the Trump-Musk regime is weaponizing Social Security. Most chillingly of all, the Trump-Musk regime is illegally falsifying government data by adding people to Social Security’s death master file—despite knowing that they are still alive. Their initial targets are thousands of legal migrants, who have SS#s so that they can work in the U.S. When SS wrongly declares a living person dead, it ruins their life. Legal migrants are the first victims, but if the Trump-Musk regime gets away with this, they will not be the last. Trump & Musk could declare people dead because they are political enemies, or members of a disfavored group. They could extort people by threatening to declare them dead. Democrats, Republicans, & independents alike all value their SS benefits & want to see them expanded, not cut.