Executive Orders
DOGE closures, deregulations
President Donald Trump signed the following Executive Orders:
EO 14217 Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy
EO 14218 Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders
Executive Order #14217 eliminates the following four organizations: Presidio Trust, Inter-American Foundation, United States African Development Foundation, and the United States Institute of Peace. It states that the head of each “unnecessary governmental entity” has a 14-day deadline for closure. Also named are two banking councils, and two health committees, including Long COVID and the Health Equal Advisory Committee, along with a USAID foreign aid committee. Presidential advisors are requested to submit additional entities for closure “on grounds that they are unnecessary.” It does not define the criteria for an entity to be deemed “unnecessary.”
Congress
National
Hochul gives a history reminder
The Trump administration on Wednesday terminated approval of New York City congestion pricing, stating that the federal government has jurisdiction over New York highways and that the additional tolls “posed an unfair burden for motorists outside the city.”
Following the announcement, Trump posted to the official White House X account a meme photo of himself with a crown on a mock cover of Time magazine, written as Trump magazine. He proclaimed:
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!
– President Donald J. Trump
Donald J Trump, via the White House X account
In a press conference following the announcement, New York governor Kathy Hochul responded:
“New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years. We sure as hell are not going to start now. The streets of the city where battles were fought we stood up to a king and we won then and in case you don’t know New Yorkers, we’re in a fight. We do not back down, not now, not ever.”
NY Gov. Kathy Hochul, Guardian News
Hochul said the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority was filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration and that the toll cameras are staying on for now. She added:
“We are a nation of States, this is what we fought for, this is what people like Alexander Hamilton and others fought for, to set up a system where we are not subservient to a king or anyone else out of Washington. Think about this next time you’re stuck in traffic.”
NY Gov. Kathy Hochul, Guardian News
Watch the full video:
Government
DOGE “fire fivers”
Trump indicated his support for a proposal to issue $5,000 “DOGE Dividend” checks to taxpayers, a suggestion that was made in a post on X by James Fishback, CEO of the Azoria investment firm.
In his letter to Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Fishback suggests taking 20 percent of Musk’s goal of $2T in savings, or $400B, and refunding it to “the 79 million US households that will be net payers of federal income tax in CY2025.”
Fishback argues that the government “failed to deliver what was promised” to taxpayers, that the money will incentivize people to report “every instance of government waste,” that it will “boost tax morale” because the government has “undermined trust” by “neglecting American citizens…and funding boondoggles in distant lands,” and that it will increase labor force participation.
Flu outreach muzzled
Also on Wednesday, staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were informed that the Department of Health and Human Services was stopping a popular flu vaccination campaign, and that its media spots and website were already removed.
Called “Wild to Mild,” the campaign educated people that getting the vaccine can help reduce flu symptoms and severe complications. The takedown comes during a still-brutal flu season with the highest level of hospitalizations in 15 years, according to NPR.
USDA rehires
Meanwhile, officials are attempting to rehire staff with the Department of Agriculture who worked on the government response to the H5N1 bird flu crisis before being fired over the weekend. This comes after the administration just announced a new strategy for fighting bird flu in poultry farms that will focus on vaccinations rather than destruction of sick birds.
IRS fires
And in more mass firings, the Associated Press reports that the Internal Revenue Service is planning to terminate approximately 7,000 probationary workers on Thursday.
In Depth
SSA data spoiler: they’re dead people
Following Trump’s comments yesterday (Day 30) that millions of dead people are receiving Social Security checks, Lee Dudek, the agency’s acting commissioner, posted a statement:
The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.
Though Trump and Musk each presented the matter as a discovery made by DOGE, the existence of these records is nothing new. In 2023, the SSA’s inspector general conducted an audit called, “Numberholders Age 100 or Older Who Did Not Have Death Information on the Numident,” which addressed the discrepencies.
The report, which is publicly available on the SSA’s website, acknowledges that the Numident is missing death information for approximately 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier. The tally included people over age 100, an expanded scope from a previous 2015 audit.
The Numident is a database maintained by SSA which contains general information on each Social Security Number, including the person’s name, date of birth, birthplace, date of death, etc., as well as claims. It populates the agency’s Death Master File (DMF), also known as the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), which is a helpful genealogical resource. Records can be obtained for deceased individuals on some genealogy websites, or via a FOIA request.
Referencing the earlier report, which first identified the problem, the 2023 audit states the SSA “had not established controls to annotate death information on the Numident records of numberholders who exceeded maximum reasonable life expectancies of age 112 or older and were likely deceased. At the time, only 35 known living individuals worldwide were age 112 or older, however, SSA’s Numident included 6.5 million numberholders age 112 or older whose record did not contain death information.”
It details several examples for how the missing data occurred, most involving clerical omissions, such as an instance when the SSA stopped payments on 623,000 people but did not update the Numident. The report recommends the SSA update the records for these known cases and evaluate automated processes to update the remaining records.
Responding to the audit, the SSA concluded it would be too costly and could duplicate information already available. The majority of the records — 10.9 million — are for people born in 1899 or earlier. Given that most states did not begin issuing death certificates until between 1900-1930, the dates would need to be gathered from local cemetery and church records.
Officials noted that the 18.9 million numbers represented 3.6 percent of the 531 million total numbers as of March 2023, that almost none were receiving payments, and they had no reported wage earnings in the past 50 years.
The auditors outlined concerns that the uncorrected records could complicate bureaucratic procedures, and also present opportunity for identity fraud. However, they noted that the records would be submitted to the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay list, an initiative created in 2009 by President Barack Obama to detect and prevent fraudulent payments.
World
I know you are but…
Trump double-downed on his insults toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, claiming in a post on Truth Social that Zelenskyy is a “dictator without elections.” The comment drew the criticism of European leaders and US Senators from both parties.
Celebrities
Media
Business
Geek Notes
SSA in 1955
Prior to the digitization of records, the Social Security Administration used punch cards to record wage earnings and calculate benefits. A publication by the SSA called, “Your Social Security — 1955” describes the complicated process and offers some little-known facts about the workings of the SSA in the 1950s.
Here are some excerpts:
- Over 53 million wage reports are received every three months for the 115 million aocounts that have already been set up and some 786 machines, with the aid of 4,721 people, work night and day in Baltimore handling this tremendous volume of reports.
- As of June 30, 1955, 22,624 file cabinets were being used to hold all of the material necessary for the establishment and maintenance of wage records.
- On the cards, “Male” is coded as “1”, “Female” is coded as “2.” Color is also coded. Whites are coded as “1”, negroes [their word, not ours] are coded as “2” and all other color classifications are coded as “3.”
It’s hard to deny the history of institutionalized racism when race was literally coded into the data that encompasses a financial history of a person’s life.
Culture
String Board Notes
In his letter, Fishback references a paper from Germany’s Institute for the Study of Labor(IZA), a private think tank presided by former Deutsche Post CEO Klaus Zumwinkel who was convicted of tax fraud in January 2009 as part of a large money laundering scheme based in Liechtenstein to evade German taxes. He was given a suspended sentence of two years imprisonment and fined one million euros.
Further Reading
Millions of Dead People on Social Security? The Agency’s Own Data Says Otherwise; The New York Times, February 19, 2019.
10 Minute Actions
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