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Trump Is Out to Destroy the 'Meaning of Social Security'—in More Ways Than One
Trump spent 2025 doing everything in his power to demolish our invaluable Social Security system itself.
Jan 02, 2026
The walls of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which lies blocks from the US Capitol, are decorated with stunning New Deal-era murals. The most famous of these murals, "The Meaning of Social Security," depicts life before and after Social Security. The mural shows the best of America, what we can do when we all come together to build our Social Security system. Thanks to Donald Trump, "The Meaning of Social Security"—along with everything it represents—is now in grave danger.
The Trump administration is making moves to demolish the Wilbur J. Cohen Building, inevitably destroying "The Meaning of Social Security" in the process. Trump plans to take a wrecking ball to this key piece of Social Security’s history, just as he did to the east wing of the White House. But this is about more than just a mural. Trump spent 2025 doing everything in his power to demolish our invaluable Social Security system itself.
Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security. Not surprisingly given his past history, he betrayed that promise over and over again in 2025.
Notably, Trump chose Russell Vought to be his powerful head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought, the lead architect of Project 2025, made the Trump administration’s agenda plain, infamously declaring: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work…”
The very sense of security that lifted us out of the Great Depression is what Trump is destroying—and he wants to erase the memory that another way is possible.
True to that goal, Trump and Vought gave Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) unprecedented power over the federal government, including Social Security. Musk and his underlings used that power to:
- Force out thousands of the dedicated civil servants who run Social Security, disproportionately those with the most experience and institutional knowledge. That despite the fact that the Social Security Administration was already extremely understaffed and overburdened, with 12,000 Americans turning age 65 every day.
- Copy the American people’s most personal data to an insecure server for an undisclosed purpose. The data is now vulnerable to hackers—including foreign governments.
- Promote lies about Social Security. Musk and his acolytes falsely claimed that Social Security is full of fraud and improper payments, a lie Trump repeated to a huge national audience during his televised March 4 address to Congress. In fact, Social Security has a payment accuracy rate of over 99%—far better than private sector retirement programs.
In short, Trump, Vought, and Musk spent 2025 creating chaos, havoc, and trauma for the hardworking employees of the Social Security Administration, which translates to vastly diminished service to the public.
Elon Musk is no longer officially in government, but Vought still is, and Musk’s DOGE minions can still be found at SSA. Moreover, Trump’s choice to lead Social Security is Frank Bisignano, a self-described “DOGE person.” Though Bisignano has no background in Social Security, he does have expertise in hollowing out companies.
Before running Social Security, Bisignano was the head of Fiserv, a financial services company, where he laid off thousands of workers. Fiserv’s stock recently dropped by 40%. The company’s current CEO blamed Bisignano, saying that “many of the assumptions and projections set by prior leaders were too rosy.” Bisignano is now a defendant in several lawsuits brought by Fiserv investors.
Bisignano appears to have brought his Fiserv tricks to Social Security. Under his leadership, the Social Security Administration has removed longstanding metrics from its website. Bisignano is touting rosy new metrics, but the truth is that he is cherry picking data. For example, Bisignano says that wait times on Social Security’s 1-800 number are down. What he doesn’t mention is that calls may be picked up by an AI chatbot or by workers who have been diverted from elsewhere and are undertrained in responding to caller concerns. It doesn’t matter how quickly a call is answered if the caller does not get the help that they need.
Moreover, between pushing people out and reassigning others to the 1-800 number, field offices are increasingly understaffed. That means longer waits to get in-person help. Essential work is not getting done. That means millions of Americans may get hit, in six months or a year, with official notices informing them that they have been overpaid, and demanding that within the next month, they pay the government thousands of dollars. Millions more will likely be underpaid but never know it.
Importantly, Social Security is facing a financial shortfall in less than a decade. Rather than addressing it by requiring billionaires like himself to pay their fair share, however, Trump is doing everything he can to make the shortfall worse. His tariffs, record deficits, and other policies are leading to high inflation, which means Social Security is paying out larger amounts. Those policies, together with his deportation of hard-working immigrants, are also leading to unemployment and stagnant wages, so less is being contributed to Social Security.
Though the shortfall is manageable, Trump’s actions give Congress less time to act and increase the chances politicians will go behind closed doors to cut working families’ benefits.
What is happening is unprecedented in Social Security’s 90-year history. No president has come close to undermining it the way Donald Trump has done—and it’s been less than a year. President George W. Bush sought to privatize Social Security, but to his credit, he was totally transparent about his proposal. In stark contrast, Trump is seeking to destroy Social Security in the dark.
The very sense of security that lifted us out of the Great Depression is what Trump is destroying—and he wants to erase the memory that another way is possible. He wants a second American gilded age, with gold-plated everything for elites and suffering for the rest of us.
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Social Security Administration 'In Turmoil' as New Reporting Details Damage Done by Trump Cuts
In-depth reporting from the Washington Post found the Social Security Administration is dealing with "record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers."
Dec 30, 2025
An in-depth report published by the Washington Post on Tuesday offers new details about the damage being done to the Social Security Administration during President Donald Trump's second term.
The Post, citing both internal documents and interviews with insiders, reported that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is "in turmoil" one year into Trump's second term, resulting in a customer service system that has "deteriorated."
The chaos at the SSA started in February when the Trump administration announced plans to lay off 7,000 SSA employees, or roughly 12% of the total workforce.
This set off a cascade of events that the Post writes has left the agency with "record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers," as the remaining SSA workforce has "struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices."
The most immediate consequence of the staffing cuts was that call wait times for Social Security beneficiaries surged to an average of roughly two-and-a-half hours, which forced the agency to pull workers employed in other divisions in the department off their jobs.
However, the Post's sources said these employees "were thrown in with minimal training... and found themselves unable to answer much beyond basic questions."
One longtime SSA employee told the Post that management at the agency "offered minimal training and basically threw [transferred employees] in to sink or swim."
Although the administration has succeeded in getting call hold times down from their peaks, shuffling so many employees out of their original positions has damaged the SSA in other areas, the Post revealed.
Jordan Harwell, a Montana field office employee who is president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 4012, said that workers in his office no longer have the same time they used to have to process pay stubs, disability claims, and appointment requests because they are constantly manning the phones.
An anonymous employee in an Indiana field office told the Post that she has similarly had to let other work pile up as the administration has emphasized answering phones over everything else.
Among other things, reported the Post, she now has less time to handle "calls from people asking about decisions in their cases, claims filed online, and anyone who tries to submit forms to Social Security—like proof of marriage—through snail mail."
Also hampering the SSA's work have been new regulations put in place by Tesla CEO Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency that bar beneficiaries from making changes to their direct deposit information over the phone, instead requiring them to either appear in person at a field office or go online.
The Indiana SSA worker told the Post of a recent case involving a 75-year-old man who recently suffered a major stroke that left him unable to drive to the local field office to verify information needed to change his banking information. The man also said he did not have access to a computer to help him change the information online.
"I had to sit there on the phone and tell this guy, 'You have to find someone to come in... or, do you have a relative with a computer who can help you or something like that?'" the employee said. "He was just like, 'No, no, no.'"
Social Security was a regular target for Musk during his tenure working for the Trump administration, and he repeatedly made baseless claims that the entire program was riddled with fraud, even referring to it as "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time."
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The Coup Matures: the Destruction of the Legislative Process
By undermining core constitutional legislative processes, authoritarianism supplants democracy, thereby clearing a path to fascism.
Dec 18, 2025
After nearly five years of the Trump reign, the siege on democracy intensifies. Citizens have learned much about the intentions and the trajectory of the rebellion. This is not an unconstitutional assault, it is an anti-constitutional assault.
The perpetrators of the coup have also learned a great deal about organizing and escalating their crusade against democracy.
Who would have thought we would be facing the democratic struggle of our lifetime? Well, actually large sectors of our society are all to familiar with this battle; the historically marginalized have always fought to win the fruits of democracy. The Constitution never explicitly mandated economic or political rights for all. Throughout history people achieved their basic rights by relentless effort and at times mortal conflict.
The doctrinal system choreographed by political and economic elites hoodwinked about 30% of adults into believing a willfully ignorant, narcissistic buffoon would protect their interests. Now combine these manufactured perceptions with the barbaric reality that this rich country has never afforded all people access to the power needed for real advancement.
Can a republican government be devised that could withstand the depredations of genuinely despotic leaders?
A toxic storm brews, into the cauldron mix a large economically vulnerable population, an unresponsive and corrupt political system, a carnival barking demagogue and the consequences are obvious.
Malevolent leaders and a malignancy in the system produces an authoritarianism that could metastasize into an American style fascism. In 1919 Irish poet W. B. Yeats, writing about their struggle for democracy against British imperialism, wrote:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold...
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
This paper examines today’s struggle to defend democracy by exploring the existential war on the Constitution, in particular the legislative process, the heart and art of representative government.
Madison’s Nightmare
The founders constructed a new form of government, one with appreciable democratic attributes albeit with limited public participation. Just ask the enslaved, women, Natives, and other assailed classes.
These men of “property and standing” curiously were interested in the vagaries of human nature, in particular virtue as it related to a new republican form of government. As such a dialectic was formulated about the role of morality in the public sphere—the government and the private sphere—citizens.
To account for human nature, the founders felt virtuous leaders would be needed to influence and guide citizens thereby ensuring a virtuous society. James Madison said as much in Federalist No.10 and No. 57, “sufficient virtue among men for self government… can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.” He continued, a constitution requires rulers who possess “wisdom and virtue to pursue the common good…”
This brings us to what this writer calls “Madison’s Nightmare”; can a republican government be devised that could withstand the depredations of genuinely despotic leaders? The founders were a nervous but optimistic bunch. They supported Benjamin Franklin’s plea at the end of the convention “to place trust in our own fallibility,” as such they ratified a constitution they believed would promote public and private virtue.
The Constitution Bends to the Coup
The Constitution was a pioneering and bold experiment especially in those dark days of monarchy, it was also plagued by undemocratic characteristics. Any fair appraisal recognizes its reliance on imperialism, slavery, the primacy of private property, sexism, racism, and classism.
Essential features lauded as Enlightenment constructs—the Social Contract, Popular Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Checks and Balances—have always been stronger in concept than reality. History has eroded and now with this coup is destroying these foundational principles.
The Social Contract Is in Default: The founder’s theorist, John Locke, devised a deal: The government would provide order and security in exchange for citizen loyalty and compliance. This contract is in default as the government can not or will not provide the security of opportunity for citizen development.
Today the people’s grievances are with a political economy that serves elite interests first and foremost, and with an oligarch masquerading as a champion of the people and democracy.
Sovereignty Isn’t So Popular: Consent of the governed is no longer required. There is a crucial disconnect between what citizens need and what the government is willing to provide. Basic needs go unsatisfied—health, housing, employment, environmental protection, and civil rights.
Powers Are No Longer Separated: The corporate and political state are joined at the wallet by mutual interests. Do not the wealthy elites have a louder political voice to determine polices in each branch and don’t these interlocking interests blunt the independence of each branch?
Checks Don’t Balance: The rule of law is flaunted with galling impunity. Congressional oversight, funding control, advice and consent, and oversight are seriously compromised or outright ignored.
The coup reveals systemic vulnerabilities. Listen to renowned conservative legal lion, retired federal Appellate Judge J. Michael Luttig, decry the “end of the rule of law” and how the Constitution “never contemplated and therefore, didn’t ever provide for a process… to withstand an attack from within” (“Judge Warns… Peril,” Michigan Law School, U of Michigan, 9/28/25)
So Madison’s nightmare haunts us.
The Long Train of Abuses
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson enumerated a “long train of abuses,” 28 specific grievances against King George. Today the people’s grievances are with a political economy that serves elite interests first and foremost, and with an oligarch masquerading as a champion of the people and democracy.
As Noam Chomsky reminds us, Adam Smith in his 1776 study, The Wealth of Nations, warned about the “masters of the universe,” the elite corporate class who naturally align with the political elite to run a country. They hold to a “vile maxim” that states “all for ourselves and nothing for other people.”
Today in our country the vile maxim manifests itself in warped budget priorities that give record tax breaks to the rich while ignoring basic human needs. Since the 1980s there has been a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%(Price and Edwards, ”Trends in Income…,” Rand, 9/12/20).
How is this remotely a democratic arrangement?
The Trump-Republican coup is ravaging the abilities of our leaders of virtue to defend the constitutional principles that protect us from anti-democratic impulses. This is abundantly evident in the treacherous ways the coup overseers are deliberately crippling traditional legislative functions. This occurs in two distinct ways: by the short-circuiting or bypassing of traditional lawmaking and by destroying the congressional hearing oversight process.
Short-Circuit Lawmaking
Article II, Sec. I gives the president vague and expansive power to declare an emergency. By doing so some 125 statutory powers are unlocked for the president’s use or misuse. This empowers an autocrat to declare an emergency then sign an executive order that bypasses the will of Congress. President Donald Trump has signed a stunning 440 executive orders, far exceeding his immediate predecessors. These orders, among others, have abolished historic agencies, imposed executive tariffs, and authorized the sacking of thousands of civil servants without due process all the while "saving" Americans from subversive “DEI and woke” policies (See Brennan Center of NYU on “Presidential Emergency Power”).
Other bypass procedures include impoundments, the illegal refusal to spend congressionally authorized funds. Coup kingpins also detour Congress by using “prefab,” canned legislation written by corporate shills like the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heritage Foundation. Heritage’s Project 2025 comprises a substantial portion of the Trump agenda. These right-wing entrepreneurs design bills to get national healthcare, public schools, civil and voting rights, and unions off our backs.
The real genius here is the people’s irrepressible desire for justice, not the ability of a government to withstand leaders who lack virtue.
Another innovation in autocracy is the establishing of a shadow government within the government, then hiring a corporate mogul, Elon Musk, to drive it. DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, is a gleefully cruel scheme to eliminate human service programs, fire thousands of civil servants, and “shrink the size of government so it can drown in a bathtub,” as croaked Grover Norquist, a Republican strategist who first surfaced during the Reagan era.
The despots also circumvent normal legislating by concocting an omnibus bill, a massive stew of taxing and spending initiatives too comprehensive and complex for human digestion. Then fast-tracking a vote with little opportunity for debate. The “Big Ugly” budget bill of 2025 was over 1,000 pages and given to members less than 24 hours before the vote.
The Dismantling of Congressional Oversight
A vital element in the lawmaking process is Congress’ power to conduct oversight, hearings, and investigations. This is where the “loyal opposition” can exert influence on policy. Today the Republican strategy is obvious, throw a monkey wrench at these duties of accountability.
Trump handmaidens Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI director Kash Patel, Department of Defense head Pete Hegseth, and Health and Human Services director Robert Kennedy, et al.—when called to testify before Congress—arrogantly engage in a circus of noncompliance. These toadies offer nonanswers, ad hominem attacks, and audacious lies.
Congressional oversight powers are so mutilated that even diligent and effective Democratic watchdogs such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), et al. are now reduced to mere eloquent barking. Thus the opposition’s oversight powers are fatally neutralized.
Coercion, decrees, mandates, and shakedowns replace analysis, debate, and compromise, which are the usual ingredients for legislating. As Maureen Dowd of the New York Times observed, Trump “rules he does not govern.” By undermining core constitutional legislative processes, authoritarianism supplants democracy, thereby clearing a path to fascism. (Opinion Section, NY Times, 11/9/25)
Is the Recent Past To Be Prologue?
Historic and contemporary flaws in our political economy, combined with tyrannical leaders, have culminated in the crisis of our lifetime. The structural guardrails are corroded, and leaders of good will struggle to restore what is lost.
This, the wealthiest country in the world, has never adequately addressed the basic security needs of large sectors of our population. Predictably then, our most vulnerable citizens searching for better opportunities become susceptible to the conjurings of a demagogue and to the manipulations of an increasingly unregulated economic and media ecosystem.
Across the nation good people are committed to defending and extending democracy.
While never a vigorous representative democracy, this system has intermittently and begrudgingly responded to citizen initiatives to force the county to live up to its founding ideals. The real genius here is the people’s irrepressible desire for justice, not the ability of a government to withstand leaders who lack virtue. The legacy struggles of our people to win an equal place in society represents the most dynamic and honorable expressions of democracy we have. This country is its most democratic when we fight for it.
Today an impressive percentage of the population is heeding Martin Luther King’s warning: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” Across the nation good people are committed to defending and extending democracy. In these perilous times, the rapid and broadening resistance to the Trump-Republican coup can accelerate the reclaiming and reimagining of democracy in the United States, bringing us to a place where, as Yeats wrote, a “terrible beauty is born.”
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