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For Immediate Release
July, 02 2026, 11:41am EDT
Contact:
Linda Benesch, lbenesch@socialsecurityworks.org
Putting the Freedom 250 Logo on Social Security Cards is Corrupt and Inappropriate
The following is a statement from Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, in response to the Social Security Administration announcing that babies born during the rest of 2026 will receive Social Security cards featuring the Freedom 250 logo:
“The first Social Security card was issued in 1936, ninety years ago. In all that time the design has never been politicized.
Now, the Trump administration is putting the logo of a semi-private, partisan entity, which is widely reported to be corrupt, on the Social Security cards of newborn babies. They claim ‘no additional cost to families or taxpayers’, but the cost has to come from somewhere.
Alarmingly, Freedom 250 has a history of harvesting data, and employs former DOGE operatives. DOGE has been found in court to have mishandled our private Social Security data, and these cards may provide another opportunity for that abuse of Americans’ most personal, sensitive information.
We demand Commissioner Bisignano answer the following questions:
- Is the Social Security Administration paying a licensing fee to Freedom 250?
- Will you release any and all contracts between the Social Security Administration and Freedom 250?
- Will Freedom 250 have access to data associated with beneficiaries of Social Security cards bearing their logo?
This is abuse of Social Security, a nonpartisan institution which Trump claimed he would not hurt. Like issuing passports with Trump’s visage and signature, putting his name on the Kennedy Center, and destroying the East Wing of the White House, turning Social Security cards into political propaganda reveals yet again Trump’s contempt for the American people he is supposed to be serving.”
Social Security Works' mission is to: Protect and improve the economic security of disadvantaged and at-risk populations; Safeguard the economic security of those dependent, now or in the future, on Social Security; and Maintain Social Security as a vehicle of social justice.
LATEST NEWS
Colorado Governor Fires Officials Who Criticized Democrat's Release of Election-Denying Clerk
"Firing people who oppose you is also a page out of Trump's playbook," said US Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
Jul 02, 2026
US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on Thursday accused Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis of conduct commonly seen from President Donald Trump's after Polis fired two members of the state clemency board, citing their decision to speak out publicly against his release of former county Clerk Tina Peters.
In 2024, Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting equipment in an effort to prove the false claim that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump. The president, who faced his own legal challenges for spreading the falsehood and trying to overturn the election, issued a symbolic pardon for Peters and pressured Polis to commute her sentence, which Polis did in May, angering members of his own party and democracy advocates.
Two members of the state clemency board, Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, were among those who opposed Polis' decision, and they went against the board's usual custom of maintaining secrecy about its proceedings to reveal that the entire board had twice voted unanimously to reject Peters' bid for a shorter sentence, only to be overruled by the governor.
On Wednesday, Proff and Taslimi told The New York Times that they'd received dismissal letters from Polis, who told them they had "breached the required duty of confidentiality by publicly divulging board members’ votes."
Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Polis' commutation of Peters's sentence was akin to acting like the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by election-denying Trump supporters "didn't happen."
"Firing people who oppose you is also a page out of Trump's playbook," said the congresswomen.
The board members also revealed that Polis had passed over other deserving applications for parole before he allowed Peters to walk free on June 1.
"We have reviewed hundreds of applications that moved us to tears," they wrote in an op-ed at The Denver Post. "People who spent decades atoning for a single terrible decision, who attended college or seminary behind bars, completed countless programs, developed curricula for other incarcerated people, mentored young offenders, and raised thousands of dollars for victims’ rights organizations."
"Along with nine other members of the board, we have read applications supported by prosecutors who tried the case, by prison wardens who watched the transformation happen, and even by victims themselves," they continued. "And we have seen the governor fail to act or delay many of these applications."
A spokesperson for Polis told the Times that their decision to divulge the two unanimous votes against Peters' release threatened the "credibility of the board." Taslimi told 9NEWS Denver that Polis' real message in deciding to fire the two board members "is that the public doesn't have the right to know that his own advisory board told him no, twice, unanimously."
"That's not protecting the process, that's protecting himself from scrutiny," said Taslimi.
Gov. Jared Polis passed over other deserving inmates to give clemency to Tina Peters, according to two members of his clemency board who revealed Polis overruled the unanimous recommendation of his experts. Polis has now fired both of them. pic.twitter.com/N2bc8uxSc7
— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) July 2, 2026
The two dismissed board members noted in their op-ed that Peters, unlike many of the people who have submitted clemency applications that have been rejected by Polis, has "expressed no contrition" for the crime she was convicted of.
"Within hours of her release, Peters appeared on a podcast and immediately resumed her attacks on the integrity of US elections," they wrote. "She repeated the debunked conspiracy theory that voting machines cheated Donald Trump out of reelection in 2020 and portrayed herself as a martyr to the effort to expose it. She called her release a miracle."
"The governor said he was moved by her admission that she made a mistake," they added. "She walked out of prison and told the world she made no mistake at all."
Proff told 9NEWS that she might regret her decision to speak out if her fellow board members were "disappointed" in her public revelations about the panel's operations.
"But I really have a feeling that the person who's upset," said Proff, "is the one that was using our board as backing for a politically unpopular and unjust decision."
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In First 2026 Senate Endorsement, AOC Backs El-Sayed in Crucial Michigan Race
"Together, we’re proving that even in the face of unprecedented outside spending, a movement powered by the people can win," El-Sayed said.
Jul 02, 2026
As the progressive movement builds its momentum in Democratic primaries, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued her first endorsement in a competitive Senate primary on Thursday, throwing her support behind Dr. Abdul El-Sayed as he battles for the party's Senate nomination in Michigan.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a likely 2028 presidential candidate and one of the most popular figures among the Democratic base, is perhaps the biggest player yet to back El-Sayed, the former public health director for Detroit, who polls currently show leading the more establishment-friendly Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8).
The primary, which will take place on August 4, will determine who faces Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in a race that could decide whether Democrats flip the Senate in November.
AOC's support for El-Sayed—who has championed Medicare for All, an arms embargo against Israel, raising taxes on the wealthy, and overturning Citizens United—puts her at odds with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has backed Stevens, and with other progressive Democrats like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) who prefer McMorrow.
However, El-Sayed has his own share of high-profile supporters, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), as well as a host of progressive House members, including Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
“Despite our ideological differences and whatever disagreements there are in the party, every single one of us sees this moment as existential,” Ocasio-Cortez told The New York Times. “And I think many people are willing to put aside differences in order to give us the best chance at winning. And I think that Abdul gives us that right now.”
Though he appears to be in the driver’s seat with just over a month before the August 4 Michigan primary, El-Sayed still faces a perilous path to the nomination that AOC’s endorsement may help him to weather.
While El-Sayed has sworn off big money donors, Stevens—the candidate closest behind him—is armed with more than $16 million in super PAC spending, including millions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) political spending arm, the United Democracy Project, which has begun to blanket the airwaves with ads boosting Stevens, who also has the backing of nearly 100 other corporate PACs representing the health insurance industry, Wall Street banks, fossil fuels, and Big Tech, among others.
The alliance between AOC and El-Sayed is nearly a decade in the making. Fresh off the stunning primary upset that led her to Congress in 2018, she endorsed the doctor's then-longshot bid to become governor of Michigan.
Sharing a photo of the two at a campaign event eight years prior, El-Sayed celebrated AOC as someone who "has spent her career taking on the powerful on behalf of everyday people, and she has shown all of us what courageous, smart, values-driven leadership looks like."
He added that she "has changed the trajectory of American politics and inspired a generation to believe that government really can work for working people."
"Together, we’re proving that even in the face of unprecedented outside spending, a movement powered by the people can win," El Sayed said.
Indeed, that movement has been winning of late.
AOC's endorsement of El-Sayed comes after three House candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—including multiple self-identified democratic socialists—cruised to victory over establishment Democrats in their primaries last week.
This week showed that the left-wing insurgency was underway nationwide, with 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros stunning longtime Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado's primary.
Pollster Adam Carlson said that El-Sayed's race in Michigan will go a long way towards demonstrating the extent to which AOC and her movement truly have reshaped the political landscape.
“If El-Sayed wins the primary and the general election in the swingiest of swing states, ahead of 2028,” he said, “it would give the progressive wing of the party a proof of concept that the conventional wisdom of 'more moderate equals more electable' has some serious holes in it, at least in the second Trump era.”
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Trump Loaded Up on Abbott Laboratories Stock Before His DOJ Dropped Criminal Probe
Abbott, which donated $500,000 to the president's inaugural fund, faced an investigation stemming from alleged deadly contamination at one of its baby formula plants in Michigan.
Jul 02, 2026
US President Donald Trump last year purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of Abbott Laboratories stock before his Justice Department dropped a years-long criminal investigation into the company, which was accused of misconduct after infant hospitalizations and deaths were linked to one of its baby formula factories.
The stock purchases were revealed in the president's annual financial disclosure report, which spans 927 pages and shows thousands of trades valued at over $1 billion. Trump's first purchase of Abbott stock last year was made in late September, and the president bought around $500,000 worth of shares in total in 2025, according to the nonprofit media organization More Perfect Union.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that "top decision makers" at the Department of Justice shut down the criminal investigation into Abbott—which donated $500,000 to Trump's inaugural fund—even though "some prosecutors believed they had evidence to criminally charge the company under a law they have used to pursue other businesses for allegedly selling contaminated foods."
"Prosecutors had been considering a misdemeanor charge against Abbott for violating the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and a separate count for misleading the government," the Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. "Investigators in early 2022 had found traces of a potentially deadly bacteria at its plant in Sturgis, Michigan, including on equipment very close to infant formula containers—as well as a long list of other problems."
The Food and Drug Administration received reports of at least nine infant deaths linked to baby formula produced at Abbott's Sturgis plant, which the company temporarily shut down amid fears of dangerous contamination. The Justice Department launched its investigation into Abbott, the largest infant formula manufacturer in the US, in 2023, under the administration of former President Joe Biden.
Trump's DOJ has taken a far more lax approach to corporate enforcement, reaching sweetheart settlement deals with companies accused of price-fixing, stifling competition, and other illegal activities.
The Journal reported that the Justice Department and Abbott "reached a settlement to resolve" a separate but related civil lawsuit alleging that the company knowingly "failed to follow manufacturing standards to protect against the risk of contamination."
"That suit, which was joined by 31 states, alleged that Abbott had a 'culture of concealment' at Sturgis and 'withheld information from FDA related to the presence of microorganisms in the Sturgis facility,'" the Journal observed.
SHOCKING: Trump's latest financial disclosures reveal that he invested upwards of $500,000 in Abbott two months before his DOJ dropped the case. https://t.co/qHXF6wvUct
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) July 1, 2026
Last April, the investigative outlet ProPublica reported that workers at Abbott's Sturgis plant—which resumed production in June 2022—said the company was still "engaging in unsanitary practices similar to those that led it to temporarily shut down."
"Current and former employees told ProPublica that they have seen the plant in Sturgis, Michigan take shortcuts when cleaning manufacturing equipment and testing for microbes," the outlet reported. "The employees said leaks in the factory are sometimes not fixed, a dangerous problem that can promote bacterial growth. They also said workers at the facility do not always take required swabs to check for pathogens while performing maintenance during production. Supervisors have urged workers to increase production and have retaliated against workers who complained about problems, the employees said.
Abbott, whose stock is down significantly year-to-date but up over the past month, called the ProPublica story "misleading" and impugned the motives of workers who spoke to the outlet.
Trump's purchase of Abbott stock wasn't the only buy that preceded significant action by his administration.
"On April 8, 2025, the day before Trump announced the tariff pause, the disclosure shows 327 individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million, one of the largest single-day stock buying sprees disclosed in the filing," Sludge reported on Wednesday. "The purchases included Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Alphabet, each valued as much as $250,000, along with scores of other companies. The S&P 500 jumped nearly 10% the following day when Trump announced the pause, one of the largest single-day gains in the index's history."
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