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retirement
'That’s Not Winning': Record Numbers of US Workers Are Raiding Their 401(k)s in Trump Economy
"Instead of helping, Trump made the largest healthcare cuts in American history and doubled down on his costly tariff taxes," said Rep. Brendon Boyle.
Mar 04, 2026
Even as President Donald Trump has declared that the US is in a "golden age" with the "greatest" economy on record, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that a record number of US workers are dipping into their retirement savings.
The Journal cited recent data from Vanguard Group showing that 6% of the 401(k) plans it administers took a hardship withdrawal in 2025, up from 4.8% that took such a withdrawal in 2024.
The top reasons for such withdrawals last year were avoiding eviction or paying off medical expenses, according to Vanguard.
The Journal noted that the Vanguard data about hardship withdrawals comes as "more Americans are falling behind on debt payments, including on some types of mortgages, putting them at risk of foreclosure," and "the average income of clients seeking help from credit-counseling agencies is rising."
Some Democrats quickly pounced on the Journal report, which they said undercut Trump's rosy assessment of the US economy.
"Record numbers of Americans are raiding their 401(k)s to avoid eviction or pay medical bills," wrote Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.). "That's not winning."
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) pointed to the Journal report and accused Trump and the GOP of exacerbating these problems with the cuts to Medicaid contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the party passed in 2025.
"A record number of Americans are dipping into their retirement savings just to stay afloat," wrote Boyle, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. "A leading cause: Skyrocketing healthcare costs. Instead of helping, Trump made the largest healthcare cuts in American history and doubled down on his costly tariff taxes."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) responded to the report by saying, "This is not the golden age Donald Trump promised."
Andrew Bates, former senior deputy press secretary for President Joe Biden, also pointed to the GOP budget law as a key reasons for Americans' deteriorating financial security.
"The GOP in Washington makes the biggest healthcare and energy cuts in history, just to lower taxes for the rich," he wrote. "'Golden Age' for Jeffrey Epstein’s surviving friends, shittiness for everyone else."
Ann Larson, co-founder of Debt Collective, noted that while the data on 401(k) withdrawals is disturbing, it doesn't tell the whole story of the dire overall state of Americans' finances.
"This is bad, but add in the almost half of older Americans who have ZERO retirement savings to pull from," Larson wrote, "and the picture is even more horrifying."
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Air Force Under Trump Will Force Senior Trans Service Members to Retire Without Benefits
"Trans people have served this country with honor," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "They deserve dignity—not betrayal."
Aug 07, 2025
The families of transgender service members in the U.S. Air Force could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in denied retirement benefits due to a memo sent by the military branch this week.
As Reuters reported Thursday, an official at the Air Force informed transgender members with 15-18 years of military service that they would no be eligible for early retirement and would instead be forced to leave the Air Force without retirement benefits. Some transgender troops had previously been told they could retire early.
"After careful consideration of the individual applications, I am disapproving all Temporary Early Retirement Authority (TERA) exception to policy requests in Tabs 1 and 2 for members with 15-18 years of service," wrote Brian Scarlett, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs.
The memo means that many service members whose applications for early retirement had already been approved will have those approvals rescinded.
The decision follows the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June that cleared the way for the U.S. Department of Defense to ban openly transgender Americans from serving in the military. President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this year to impose such a ban.
"This is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members."
Last week, in a court filing related to transgender service members' lawsuit against the administration, the Department of Justice denied that the plaintiffs are transgender, instead calling them "trans-identifying individuals."
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said there would be "no more pronouns" and "no more dudes in dresses" permitted in the military at a press conference in May, and transgender service members have recently reported facing bigotry as they've departed the service.
Military.com reported last month that one 20-year transgender veteran of the Army was told by an instructor of a mandatory pre-retirement course that she and her classmates should cross out the words "pronoun, gender, diversity, and inclusion" from their workbooks.
The incident, she said, was "yet another reminder that it doesn't matter how much they say, 'Thank you for all the effort you put in and that your contributions are valuable'... because at the end of the day, they're having us manually go in and remove our own contributions from all the documentation."
The attempted "removal" of any record of transgender people's service now extends to their retirement benefits, according to the memo sent August 4, with service members who have served for close to two decades being given the option to quit or be forced out, with lump-sum payments instead of benefits.
Shannon Minter of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights told Reuters the memo was "devastating."
"This is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members," said Minter.
Reuters reported that the memo included a question-and-answer section, with one question reading, "How do I tell family we're not getting retirement benefits?"
The Air Force suggested long-serving transgender members tell their loved ones to "focus on the benefits you do retain," such as Department of Veterans Affairs benefits and "experience," and to seek counseling services.
"The Air Force told transgender service members to prepare for early retirement—then changed course and is now forcing them out with no benefits at all," said U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). "Trans people have served this country with honor. They deserve dignity—not betrayal. We must speak out and fight back, always."
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'Disaster in the Making': Trump to Open 401(k)s to Crypto, Private Equity Vultures
"Stuffing private equity, crypto, and other 'alternative assets' into 401(k)s is about propping up scams and bailing out an industry that's run out of buyers," said one critic.
Aug 07, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday that would allow private equity and cryptocurrencies into Americans' 401(k)s, appeasing corporate interests that lobbied for the change and disregarding warnings about the risks it poses to retirement accounts.
Citing an unnamed senior White House official, CNN reported that "the order calls for the Labor Department and Securities and Exchange Commission to issue guidance to employers about providing access to those alternative investments in their retirement accounts."
The private equity industry has been working for years to gain access to a portion of the roughly $12 trillion that Americans have saved in workplace retirement plans.
"This is the holy grail for private equity," Axios reported Thursday, noting that federal rules currently bar most defined-contribution plans from investing in private equity and crypto. Both industries spent big on the 2024 election; the investment management behemoth BlackRock, whose CEO has advocated opening 401(k)s to private equity, donated to Trump's inaugural committee.
James Baratta and Whitney Curry Wimbish noted in The American Prospect earlier this year that "there was added desperation from the industry" for access to 401(k)s "because of their dire need for cash amid weakening performance and fewer deals."
"Some firms have begun mortgaging their own funds for money to pay out limited partners," they added. "Retail investors represented trillions in untapped potential."
"Private equity executives have enriched themselves by the billions, taking high fees and other charges from working people's hard-earned retirement savings in pension funds."
Helaine Olen, managing editor at the American Economic Liberties Project and a longtime personal finance columnist, said in a statement Thursday that "stuffing private equity, crypto, and other 'alternative assets' into 401(k)s is about propping up scams and bailing out an industry that's run out of buyers—and it's being done at the expense of Americans' retirements everywhere."
"There's a reason most employers didn't bite when Trump tried this the first time and why the private investments industry has put on such a thick lobbying campaign," said Olen. "These funds are high-fee, risky, and opaque. Private equity consistently underperforms the S&P 500. This is a windfall for billionaire fund managers and a disaster in the making for regular Americans trying to save for retirement."
Last week, the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and American Federation of Teachers released a report warning that if private equity is given a foothold in 401(k)s, "millions of workers saving for retirement would be exposed to higher risks and steep fees in products that lack basic investor protections and transparency requirements."
The report found that private equity profitability "has been in a year-over-year decline" for the past two decades and that "fee structures—paid directly by investors or indirectly through portfolio companies—are prone to extensive manipulation."
Lisa Donner, co-executive director at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, said that "private equity executives have enriched themselves by the billions, taking high fees and other charges from working people's hard-earned retirement savings in pension funds."
"Now they want fees from the trillions of dollars in individual retirement accounts," Donner added, "putting millions of more people at risk."
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