Walking Just 11 Minutes Each Day Could Add Years To Your Life, Says Study. Here’s Why It Works.
Korin Miller – April 21, 2025
Walking This Long Could Add Years To Your Life miniseries
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Walking has seen a surge in popularity over the past few years, thanks to a slew of research that’s found that it’s great for your overall health and longevity. Now, another study has found that you don’t need to log several miles to reap the benefits of walking. Instead, just a few minutes a day could provide a serious boost for your overall health.
So, what’s the deal with this study and why is walking so good for you? Here’s what we know.
Meet the expert: Albert Matheny, RD, CSCS, co-founder of SoHo Strength Lab.
What did the study find?
The meta-analysis, which was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, analyzed data from 196 peer-reviewed articles that involved more than 30 million people. The researchers specifically looked at the link between the participants’ physical activity and health.
After crunching the data, the researchers discovered that people who logged 75 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise (which includes brisk walking) per week had a 23 percent lower risk of early death.
When the study authors broke that down even more, they found that 75 minutes a week of moderate-intensity exercise lowered the risk of cardiovascular disease by 17 percent and cancer by seven percent.
Why is walking so good for you?
There are a few reasons why walking is beneficial. For one, it’s approachable.
“There’s no skill hurdle and people aren’t usually intimidated by it,” says Albert Matheny, RD, CSCS, co-founder of SoHo Strength Lab. You also don’t need extra equipment, meaning you can usually just walk out the door and go.
Check out some of Women’s Health’s favorite walking sneakers:
“Walking is great because it’s a cardiovascular exercise, but it’s also weight-bearing,” Matheny says. “That’s ultimately better for bone density and overall mobility.”
In addition to all of that, research has linked a walking habit with better moods, improvements in heart health, and a lowered risk of developing diabetes.
How much walking do you need to do per day to reap the benefits?
It really depends on your goals. This particularly study found that walking at a solid pace for just 11 minutes a day (a.k.a. 75 minutes spread out over the course of seven days) can give you all of those health perks mentioned above.
But that doesn’t mean you need to stop walking once you hit 11 minutes. “There’s no magic number,” Matheny says. “It’s not like if you walk less than 5,000 steps, you get no benefit.”
If you’re looking to take up a walking habit for fitness, he suggests aiming for 5,000+ steps a day. Ultimately, though, Matheny recommends just doing what you can.
How can I add more walking to my day?
There are so many ways to take up a walking habit, including making it a regular workout or finding ways to sneak it in, like walking to a friend’s house versus driving there. (You may need to upgrade your footwear to get a good walking shoe if you plan to ramp things up, though.)
“You can also just try to go outside and walk whenever you can,” Matheny says. “It’s good for your mind and body.”
The Pentagon’s newly resigned spokesperson predicts Trump will fire Pete Hegseth after a ‘full-blown meltdown’ of a month
Matthew Loh – April 21, 2025
The Pentagon’s former top spokesperson says Pete Hegseth likely won’t last long in his role.
John Ullyot wrote that the Pentagon has been distracted by a month of “endless drama” after Signalgate.
Ullyot said he supports Hegseth, but that Trump “deserves better” from his Cabinet.
John Ullyot, who until recently was a top Pentagon spokesperson, says Pete Hegseth’s time as defense secretary is likely running out.
In a scathing opinion piece published by Politico on Sunday evening, Ullyot suggested that President Donald Trump may consider dismissing Hegseth as the Pentagon grapples with a string of public affairs crises.
“President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer,” Ullyot wrote.
Ullyot has vocally backed Hegseth, writing in another piece in December that the veteran and former Fox News host was “well qualified for the job” of leading the Defense Department. Even when he stepped down from the Pentagon earlier this week, Ullyot said he supported his old boss.
He continued to praise Hegseth in his op-ed. “I value his friendship and am grateful for his giving me the opportunity to serve,” Ullyot wrote.
“Yet even strong backers of the secretary like me must admit: The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration,” he added.
A ‘Month From Hell’
Ullyot’s criticism comes after his tenure leading Defense Department public affairs at the start of the Trump administration. He oversaw the Pentagon’s mandate to remove DEI images and its reassignment of its media office spaces, booting outlets such as The New York Times and NBC in favor of right-leaning outlets like Breitbart.
However, in February, Ullyot’s role as chief spokesperson was taken over by Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s current press secretary. Ullyot eventually resigned on Wednesday, saying he told Hegseth when he was hired that he “was not interested in being number two to anyone in public affairs.”
In his op-ed days later, he described the Pentagon’s recent struggles as a “Month from Hell” that began with Signalgate — The Atlantic’s bombshell report in March that its chief editor was mistakenly added to a Signal group discussing US strikes.
Ullyot wrote that Hegseth’s initial response was a disaster.
“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth had told reporters. The Atlantic followed up by publishing details of F/A-18 strikes Hegseth sent to the chat.
“This was a violation of PR rule number one — get the bad news out right away,” Ullyot wrote of Hegseth’s comment to the press.
Other, separate reports soon piled on top of Signalgate, and Ullyot wrote that it’s likely more will continue to emerge.
“Unfortunately, after a terrible month, the Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama,” Ullyot wrote.
These included reports that Hegseth had brought his wife to sensitive meetings with foreign counterparts and that the Pentagon was set to give Elon Musk a top-secret briefing. Three of Hegseth’s top aides were also reportedly fired this week amid an investigation into leaks, while the secretary’s chief of staff has resigned.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Hegseth had also put sensitive information about US strikes in a second Signal chat that included his wife and brother. The Times’ report was based on four anonymous sources.
The Times reported that Jennifer Rauchet, Pete Hegseth’s wife, was among the people in a Signal chat that contained details of F/A-18 strikes.ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
In a statement to Business Insider, Parnell, the Pentagon’s current spokesperson, called the report “garbage” and praised Hegseth’s office as becoming more efficient. “There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story,” he said.
Still, Ullyot wrote that all of these crises combined mean Hegseth would likely lose his job.
“In short, the building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership,” Ullyot wrote.
He wrote that Trump had previously dismissed other Cabinet members whom Ullyot respected, including Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson, and Mark Esper.
The former Pentagon spokesperson ended his opinion piece by suggesting that a similar firing of Hegseth would benefit Trump.
“The president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon,” he wrote. “Given his record of holding prior Cabinet leaders accountable, many in the secretary’s own inner circle will applaud quietly if Trump chooses to do the same in short order at the top of the Defense Department.”
Can voters use Real ID to satisfy SAVE Act voting rules, as Byron Daniels said?
Grace Abels – April 21, 2025
Even Rep. Byron Donalds’ state of Florida does not show citizenship on its Real ID driver’s licenses, so they wouldn’t provide the proof of citizenship that would be needed to register to vote under the proposed SAVE Act.
Byron Donald’sStatement: Under the SAVE Act, “as long as you have a Real ID … it should be easy for you to register to vote.”
Responding to concerns about a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote, some Republicans have said an eligible voter needs only a Real ID.
But in 44 states, that’s not a solution.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, passed the U.S. House on April 10 by a 220-208 vote. A priority of House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump, it would require in-person proof of citizenship, such as a U.S. passport or a combination of a driver’s license and birth certificate, to register to vote.Republicans say the SAVE Act — which has a high 60-vote hurdle to clear in the Senate — is necessary to ensure that noncitizens don’t vote in U.S. elections. Federal laws already prohibit noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and cases of noncitizens voting are extremely rare.
Democrats denounced the bill as a threat to voting rights, criticizing the required paperwork as burdensome; about half of Americans don’t have passports, for example. Republicans accused Democrats of exaggerating the burden.
“To the people who are concerned about married women being able to register (to vote) there’s this thing in the United States, every state does it now, called Real ID,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., in an April 10 NewsNation interview. “As long as you have a Real ID, which virtually every American has to have today, it should be easy for you to register to vote.”
Real IDs are federally compliant, state-issued driver’s licenses or identification cards that require documentation including a Social Security card and proof of citizenship or legal immigration status to obtain. Congress passed a 2005 law requiring state-issued IDs to meet federal minimum security standards following a 9/11 Commission recommendation.
A Real ID card is typically marked with a black or gold star. About 56% of American IDs were Real ID compliant in January 2024, but many people are rushing to get Real IDs before a May 7 deadline after which a non-Real ID driver’s license, for example, won’t be sufficient to board domestic flights. (Some states, such as Illinois, are saying “Real ID can wait” because of high demand.)
However, not every Real ID meets SAVE Act requirements to prove citizenship. The SAVE Act accepts only Real IDs that indicate whether a person is a citizen, which most do not.
Further, Real IDs can be issued to noncitizens with lawful status, including permanent residence, temporary protected status, refugees, asylum applicants and people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Homeland Security Department’s website says.
Five states — Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington — offer a version of Real ID that indicates whether a person is a U.S. citizen, called an enhanced driver’s license. These licenses are offered at an additional fee, so not every Real ID in those states is compliant with the SAVE Act. Homeland Security officials have been working since 2008 to bring the enhanced ID program to all states.
Another state, Idaho, in 2023 began offering IDs with an optional citizenship marker, although it’s unclear whether all are Real ID compliant.
PolitiFact found no evidence that the remaining states issue Real IDs that comply with the citizenship proof required by the SAVE Act.
Thirty-six states already have some form of voter ID law requiring identity verification at the polls, but the SAVE Act would implement hurdles in every state at an earlier step — voter registration. For most states, that is new terrain.
“There is only one state in the U.S., Arizona, that has experience with proof-of-citizenship to register to vote,” said Lori Minnite, a Rutgers University political science professor and expert on voter fraud.
For state and local elections, Arizona accepts state IDs as proof of citizenship after comparing the driver’s license number to existing information in its Department of Transportation database. The physical IDs are no different than those issued to noncitizens. It is unclear whether such an ID, only distinguishable from a noncitizen ID when referenced against internal state data, would count as “indicating” citizenship under the SAVE Act.
The SAVE Act’s author, Central Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy acknowledged in a recent hearing that only a few states offer compliant licenses, and he hoped more would follow: “We believe, right, that the structure is put in place now that allow — I think there’s at least five states that do have the citizenship status as part of the Real ID — encourage more states to do so, right? That would be part of the goal here.”
In 2023, Ohio passed a law to offer enhanced driver’s licenses, but it is not yet accepting applications. Iowa and Montana are considering bills to add a citizenship marker on IDs.
Neither Donalds nor Roy responded to requests for comment.
Beyond Real ID, other ways to verify identity pose challenges
For the majority of Americans who don’t live in Idaho or one of the few states with enhanced IDs, the SAVE Act says they can prove citizenship with a valid U.S. passport; a military ID card and a military service record showing place of birth; or a government issued photo-ID that shows place of birth.Those documents, or a Real ID that indicates citizenship, are the only ones that can prove citizenship on their own under the bill. Without one of those, a person must show a driver’s license or identification along with another document showing birthplace, such as a birth certificate, naturalization certificate, consular report of birth abroad or final adoption decree.
All documents must be presented in person.
Any mismatch between documents and someone’s current identification cards could disrupt voter registration. Mismatches are common for people who change their names following marriage.
In the same hearing, Roy said the SAVE Act would not affect people currently registered to vote.
He added: “If they have an intervening event or if the states want to clean the rolls, people would come forward to register to demonstrate their citizenship so we could convert our system over some reasonable time to a citizenship-based registration system.”
Jonathan Diaz, director of voting, advocacy and partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that supports voting rights, said he believes the SAVE Act would apply to any updates to current registration or reregistration.
As prominentDemocrats warned that the billwouldmake voting harder formillions of married women, SAVE Act supporters said the bill addresses the needs of people with name changes by leaving it up to the states to decide what documentation would be required to resolve document discrepancies. It directs each state to “establish a process under which an applicant can provide such additional documentation” to establish citizenship if the person’s documents don’t include matching information.
Minnite called this language ambiguous: “Could a married woman who does not have a passport and who changed her name use a marriage certificate to prove her citizenship? The SAVE Act is not clear.”Diaz said, “Different states could have different standards and different degrees of proof needed, which will be really hard for voters to navigate.”
PolitiFact’s ruling
Donalds said under the SAVE Act, “as long as you have a Real ID … it should be easy for you to register to vote.” Most Real IDs are not compliant with the citizenship proof required under the SAVE Act. PolitiFact identified just six states that offer Real IDs that show citizenship, and five of them require an additional fee for that.
People in the remaining 44 states would need other forms of documentation to register to vote under the SAVE Act, such as a U.S. passport, a military service ID and record, or a birth certificate with a driver’s license.
Donalds’ statement has an element of truth because in a handful of states, people have access to Real IDs that would be sufficient to register to vote under the SAVE Act. But he ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate the statement Mostly False.
PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
Nearly 300 scientists apply for French academic program amid Trump cuts in U.S.
Alana Wise – April 18, 2025
Students, researchers and demonstrators rally during a protest against the Trump administration’s funding cuts on research, health and higher education at the University of California Los Angeles on April 8.Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
More than 2,500 scientists fled russia after putin invaded Ukraine.
A French university courting U.S.-basedacademics said it has already received nearly 300 applications for researchers seeking “refugee status” amid President Trump’s elimination of funding for several scientific programs.
Last month, Aix-Marseille University, one of the country’s oldest and largest universities, announced it was accepting applications for its Safe Place For Science program, which it said offers “a safe and stimulating environment for scientists wishing to pursue their research in complete freedom.”
This week, Aix-Marseille said it had received 298 applications, and 242 of them are eligible and currently up for review. Of the eligible applicants, 135 are American, 45 have a dual nationality, 17 are French and 45 are from other countries, the university said.Sponsor Message
“I am pleased that this request for the creation of scientific refugee status has found both media and political traction,”university President Éric Berton said in a statement.
The public research university said there is an even split between male and female applicants, with backgrounds from various prestigious U.S. institutions including Johns Hopkins University, NASA, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Yale and Stanford. About 20 Americans will be accepted into the program to begin in June.
“We at Aix-Marseille University are convinced that mobilization to address the challenges facing scientific research must be collective in France and Europe,” Berton said.
The Trump administration has prioritized aggressive spending cuts and federal workforce reduction, leading to a battle for America’s best and brightest.
Already, for example, universities and medical research facilities are set to lose billions in federal funding under the National Institutes of Health. And rollbacks on federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs have compromised research ranging from climate change to biomedical research.
Aix-Marseille is not the only European institution hoping to capitalize on America’s brain drain.
Last month, France’s CentraleSupélec announced a $3.2 million grant to help finance American research that had been halted in the states. And Netherlands Minister of Education, Culture and Science Eppo Bruins wrote in a letter to parliament that he requested to set up a fund aimed at bringing top international scientists to the Netherlands.
There is some evidence that these entreaties are reaching curious ears.
Last month in the journal Nature, more than 1,200 respondents identifying as scientists cited Trump’s funding cuts as reasons they were considering moving to Canada or Europe.
For decades, residents of South Patrick Shores in Brevard County have tied a myriad of health conditions to the area, potentially stemming from an old military base. The area is at the center of a suspected cancer cluster.
Before homes began to be built in the early 1950s, the area was a military landfill near the Banana River Naval Air Station, where Patrick Space Force Base is now located.
Hazardous waste—ranging from ammunition and unexploded ordnance to chemicals and fuels—is believed to be buried underground on the land just south of Cape Canaveral.
Two years ago, the corps scanned yards in a 52-acre portion of South Patrick Shores with ground-penetrating radars as part of a $5.8 million project to look for military waste. More than 300 homes lie on the site.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is set to begin digging in yards in South Patrick Shores (WKMG/YouTube)
This week, the Army’s engineering branch resumed its excavation efforts to dig at 10 test pits across the neighborhood, aiming to unearth long-hidden hazards that may be present. The ten pits will be dug by April 25.
Brad Tompa, who is leading the clean-up operation, told county commissioners last week that South Patrick Shores was an “uncontrolled dump.”
For homeowners who have given permission, the Corps will dig trenches approximately eight feet deep and eight feet long and begin sampling the soil for any contaminants that may have accumulated.
The initial phase of the investigation is anticipated to take six months, pending findings.
Brevard County Commissioner Katie Delaney alleged that residents who had dug items from their own yards had severe side effects, potentially stemming from the items found.
Sandra Sullivan, who in 2018 said she found lead, bullets, and a partially full oil barrel in her yard, said she became “sick.”
“I know it’s made me sick,” she told News 6 on Tuesday. “Every time I dug up something, between eight days and seven weeks, I would have symptoms.”
Photograph of Banana River Naval Air Station in 1943 before it became Patrick Air Force Base (U.S. Navy)
A 2019 report from the Florida Department of Health found higher rates of certain types of cancers—including bladder cancer and leukemia—in South Patrick Shores than in other parts of the country. The state health department was unable to confirm the cause.
The overall incidence of cancer in the community does not appear to be elevated.
The pattern of Hodgkin’s disease, a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system, reportedly first emerged in South Patrick Shores in 1967, when 24-year-old Larry Crockett found out he had cancer. By 1982, five of Crockett’s neighbors were diagnosed with the same cancer.
According to a 1991 report by the Tampa Bay Times, eight people in a 10-block area near the toxic waste sites had been diagnosed with the rare cancer. Five of them had died.
“It’s not a fluke,” one resident diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease a decade earlier told the paper. At the time, a spokesperson for Patrick Air Force Base said there was “no known link.”
A health assessment was conducted in 1992 in the area after residents reported an increase in the number of cases of Hodgkin’s disease.
The report, still on the Florida DOH website, suggested that residents believed it stemmed from contamination linked to a radar cluster at the military base and the testing of DDT, which was used in WWII to limit the spread of insect-borne diseases.
Residents were also concerned about the rate of Lou Gehrig’s disease, which affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, and psychiatric illness in the area.
The Independent has contacted the Florida Department of Health and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for more information.
How DOGE may have improperly used Social Security data to push voter fraud narratives
Stephen Fowler – April 11, 2025
Investor Antonio Gracias at a town hall rally held by Elon Musk in Green Bay, Wis., on March 30. Gracias, who is part of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, has been working at the Social Security Administration. Scott Olson/Getty Images
One of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency lieutenants working in the Social Security Administration has been pushing dubious claims about noncitizens voting, apparently using access to data that court records suggest DOGE isn’t supposed to have.
The staffer, Antonio Gracias, made the claims as part of larger misleading statements about the SSA’s enumeration-beyond-entry, or EBE program, which streamlines the process for granting Social Security cards to certain categories of eligible immigrants.
Gracias said in an April 2 appearance on Fox and Friends that “5-plus million” noncitizens who “came to the country as illegals” received Social Security numbers “through an automatic system” and proceeded to “get into our benefit systems.”Sponsor Message
“And just because we were curious, we then looked to see if they were on the voter rolls. And we found in a handful of cooperative states that there were thousands of them on the voter rolls and that many of them had voted,” Gracias said.
State-levelaudits of voter data have found few examples of noncitizens voting, which is a federal crime punishable with prison and deportation.
Later that week, Gracias furthered his claims on a podcast. “I think this was a move to import voters,” he said, echoing a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump and Musk elevated during the 2024 campaign season and Republican lawmakers are invoking to push for stricter voting policies.
While Musk and some Republican lawmakers are now amplifying Gracias’ claims online, experts familiar with Social Security say Gracias is mischaracterizing the program, and voter registration experts say they doubt the accuracy of his claims about noncitizens voting.
From “no access granted” to data shared by Musk
Using Social Security data to imply that noncitizens are breaking the law also could have violated a court order that prevents DOGE staffers from handling sensitive SSA systems.
It’s the latest example of concerns among privacy activists that DOGE’s sweeping access to personal and financial information of millions of Americans may violate privacy laws and may be used for inappropriate purposes.
It does not mention his analysis of how noncitizens are given Social Security numbers. Gracias is also not supposed to see or share personally identifiable information, or PII, within agency data, according to earlier court filings.
“Appointee shall not share any Personally Identifiable Information accessed or obtained through the use of SSA systems or work performed for SSA, with any external entity, organization, or agency federal or state,” an addendum to his appointment request reads.
A sign in front of the entrance of the Social Security Administration’s main campus in Woodlawn, Md.Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
In a March 12 declaration from the SSA’s then-Chief Information Officer Michael Russo, Gracias is one of two SSA DOGE employees listed as not having access to sensitive databases or PII.
“No SSA data or personally identifiable information access, or access to systems containing such information, has been granted to Employee 6 and Employee 4,” the document reads. Employee 6, listed in the record as a “Growth Equity Vice President,” appears to be Jon Koval, an associate of Gracias at his venture capital firm, who is also detailed to DOGE.Sponsor Message
On March 20, a federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order blocking DOGE employees from accessing SSA data. Gracias first publicized his claims alongside Musk at a rally in Wisconsin on March 30, ahead of the state’s special Supreme Court election.
A federal appeals court dismissed the Trump administration’s effort to lift that temporary restraining order April 1.
A few days after his Fox News interview on April 2, Gracias joined the All-In podcast on April 4 and offered more details on the data he says he used and the conclusions he drew, which has been subsequently shared by conservative media outlets and amplified by Musk on his social media site X for several days.
Neither Gracias nor a DOGE spokesperson responded to NPR’s questions about when and how any Social Security data was accessed and whether it complied with the court order.
NPR reached out to Social Security and initially spoke to acting press officer Nicole Tiggemann. In a subsequent email from a generic press account, the agency declined to answer detailed questions about DOGE’s data access. It did confirm that a chart Gracias publicized showing totals of noncitizens with Social Security numbers through EBE was taken from an SSA dashboard — but claimed that the restraining order prevented them from responding to NPR’s request for additional data from the program. The agency did not respond to inquiries asking to confirm who gave the emailed answer.
That leaves many questions still unanswered about the Social Security data behind DOGE’s claims. It’s possible the analysis was conducted before the March 20 TRO or that Gracias is not the DOGE employee who accessed any personal Social Security information. So far, there has been no evidence provided of any states sharing public or private voter data with the DOGE team at SSA either.
It’s also possible that the data about noncitizens comes from non-DOGE activities. The judge overseeing the case wrote on March 21 that the TRO only applies to “SSA employees working on the DOGE agenda. It has no bearing on ordinary operations at SSA.”
One clue about the data’s potential provenance comes from this week’s court filing: a March 17 email exchange from someone identified as Employee 7 who copied Gracias and Koval on a request for access to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, which SSA uses to verify the immigration status of EBE applicants.
“This access is absolutely critical to get detailed immigration status for non-citizen SSNs to detect fraud and improper payments,” the email reads.
Employee 7 appears to be DOGE staffer Marko Elez, who resigned from his post at the Treasury Department over past racist tweets — and who shared a spreadsheet of personal information in violation of data-sharing policies, an audit found — before being rehired at multiple federal agencies.
Gracias puts the EBE program at the center of his account about how his team decided to check voter rolls. The program started in 2017 during the first Trump administration but grew dramatically under the Biden administration, which allowed millions of asylum-seekers to enter the U.S. and expanded the categories of immigrants who could stay on a temporary basis.
Until recently, under the EBE program, noncitizens applying for work permits, green cards or naturalization with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could apply for Social Security cards without visiting a field office. The Washington Post and other outlets reported that the EBE program was paused in mid-March, citing an internal email. NPR has not independently confirmed the reporting.
A sign directs voters to cast their ballots at a polling station set up at the Flagler County Public Library on April 1 in Palm Coast, Fla. People associated with DOGE are using Social Security data to advance debunked claims that large numbers of noncitizens are voting.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Lawfully present immigrants who are authorized to work get Social Security numbers to ensure they are “paying their taxes into the Social Security trust funds as required by law,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.Sponsor Message
Since immigrants in the process of naturalizing could use the EBE program, those individuals could be expected to appear on voter rolls once they became U.S. citizens.
It remains unclear which state records the DOGE team checked for noncitizens. On the All-In podcast, Gracias described checking the public voter rolls of four “friendly” states to find noncitizens on the rolls. He then said “we went even further with those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted.”
Later in the program, he said “well over a thousand voted” in one state. He has said his team has referred those cases for federal prosecution. In the same unsigned email, the unnamed SSA spokesperson declined to respond to NPR’s questions about the inquiry into individuals who allegedly were identified as illegal voters using Social Security data, citing “ongoing criminal investigations on this matter.”
But voting experts say the data cross-checking Gracias describes raises legal questions and can be prone to many kinds of errors.
“There are huge accuracy questions here,” said Charles Stewart, the director of MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab.
Typically, states’ public voter rolls would not include Social Security numbers, which would make data matching far less precise. There are known issues with false matches when just using names and birthdays.
Furthermore, it is common for states to find voters who have since naturalized and become citizens when cross-checking databases of noncitizens against their voter rolls.
“DOGE has repeatedly made massive data errors,” said David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “I have some doubts that they’ve discovered anything more than maybe just some poor government data quality tracking or they don’t understand the data they’re looking at.”
It’s also not clear if the DOGE effort to combine Social Security data with other sources inside and outside the federal government runs afoul of data sharing and privacy laws that are designed to limit access to sensitive information to those who have a need to use it.Sponsor Message
“The use has to be consistent with the reason that you’re asking for the records in the first place, which has to be consistent with your own agency’s mission,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School and a voting policy adviser in the Biden administration. “‘Because I’m curious’ is not a thing when the federal government comes to data.”
President Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 6.Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Gracias appeared to attribute some of his team’s access to an executive order signed by the president last month that directs agencies to facilitate “both the intra- and inter-agency sharing” of records.
“President Trump had the courage to allow us to go across databases, he signed an executive order,” he said on Fox News. “It’s never been done before where agencies could talk to each other and databases can talk to each other. That allowed us to connect all this data to find these people across the system, across the benefits system, all the way to the voting records.”
Another executive order, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” directs the Department of Homeland Security and DOGE to “review each State’s publicly available voter registration list” among other requests, similar to Gracias’ effort at SSA.
Both presidential actions include the caveat that any sharing must occur “consistent with law.”
The latest in DOGE data concerns
Multiple federal judges have found the DOGE effort has likely broken the law in its effort to comb through agencies to find “waste, fraud and abuse.” Court records have also shown the Trump administration is unable to account for the scope of DOGE’s data access, or the need for a small number of staffers to have virtually unfettered access to sensitive, compartmentalized data across the government.
The claims made by Gracias and Musk about Social Security data underscores growing questions around how DOGE is using the data it has gathered. In a ruling blocking DOGE access to Treasury systems, Judge Jeannette Vargas warned that “a real possibility exists that sensitive information has already been shared outside of the Treasury Department, in potential violation of federal law.”Sponsor Message
But Gracias’ latest claims about noncitizens voting continue to have an impact on policy in the Trump administration and with the Republican-controlled Congress. During Thursday’s House debate over the SAVE Act, Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., mentioned DOGE’s allegations and the claim that the Biden administration had “imported” noncitizens as a reason to pass the bill.
“We have evidence that they’re participating in our elections,” Bean said. “The DOGE team just announced millions of illegals now have Social Security numbers. It’s happening and it ends today when we vote on this SAVE Act.”
Have information you want to share about DOGE access to government databases, Social Security, immigration and IT systems? Reach out to these authors through encrypted communication on Signal. Stephen Fowler is at stphnfwlr.25, and Jude Joffe-Block is at JudeJB.10.
This trumpusk administration is first of all, not civilized. And if it were, it wouldn’t make any difference. vladimir putin and the money laundering trump aligned russian oligharchs, want to destroy America’s Constitutional Democracy, just at they’ve destroyed their own nation. And trump and a large number of MAGANAZI republi-cons in our congress are paid operatives of this fascist, evil, autocratic cabal. WTFU merica www.tarbabys.com
Producing Something This Stupid Is the Achievement of a Lifetime
By David Brooks, Opinion Columnist – April 10, 2025
Credit…Jasmine Clarke for The New York Times
You might have seen the various data points suggesting that Americans are losing their ability to reason.
The trend starts with the young. The percentage of fourth graders who score below basic in reading skills on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests is the highest it has been in 20 years. The percentage of eighth graders below basic was the highest in the exam’s three-decade history. A fourth grader who is below basic cannot grasp the sequence of events in a story. An eighth grader can’t grasp the main idea of an essay or identify the different sides of a debate.
Tests by the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies tell a similar story, only for older folks. Adult numeracy and literacy skills across the globe have been declining since 2017. Tests from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that test scores in adult literacy have been declining over the past decade.
Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”
This kind of literacy is the backbone of reasoning ability, the source of the background knowledge you need to make good decisions in a complicated world. As the retired general Jim Mattis and Bing West once wrote, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”
Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute emphasizes that among children in the fourth and eighth grades, the declines are not the same across the board. Scores for children at the top of the distribution are not falling. It’s the scores of children toward the bottom that are collapsing. The achievement gap between the top and bottom scorers is bigger in America than in any other nation with similar data.
There are some obvious contributing factors for this general decline. Covid hurt test scores. America abandoned No Child Left Behind, which put a lot of emphasis on testing and reducing the achievement gap. But these declines started earlier, around 2012, so the main cause is probably screen time. And not just any screen time. Actively initiating a search for information on the web may not weaken your reasoning skills. But passively scrolling TikTok or X weakens everything from your ability to process verbal information to your working memory to your ability to focus. You might as well take a sledgehammer to your skull.
My biggest worry is that behavioral change is leading to cultural change. As we spend time on our screens, we’re abandoning a value that used to be pretty central to our culture — the idea that you should work hard to improve your capacity for wisdom and judgment all the days of your life. That education, including lifelong out-of-school learning, is really valuable.
This value is based on the idea that life is filled with hard choices: whom to marry, whom to vote for, whether to borrow money. Your best friend comes up to you and says, “My husband has been cheating on me. Should I divorce him?” To make these calls, you have to be able to discern what is central to the situation, envision possible outcomes, understand other minds, calculate probabilities.
To do this, you have to train your own mind, especially by reading and writing. As Johann Hari wrote in his book “Stolen Focus,” “The world is complex and requires steady focus to be understood; it needs to be thought about and comprehended slowly.” Reading a book puts you inside another person’s mind in a way that a Facebook post just doesn’t. Writing is the discipline that teaches you to take a jumble of thoughts and cohere them into a compelling point of view.
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Americans had less schooling in decades past, but out of this urge for intellectual self-improvement, they bought encyclopedias for their homes, subscribed to the Book of the Month Club and sat, with much longer attention spans, through long lectures or three-hour Lincoln-Douglas debates. Once you start using your mind, you find that learning isn’t merely calisthenics for your ability to render judgment; it’s intrinsically fun.
But today one gets the sense that a lot of people are disengaging from the whole idea of mental effort and mental training. Absenteeism rates soared during the pandemic and have remained high since. If American parents truly valued education would 26 percent of students have been chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year?
In 1984, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, 35 percent of 13-year-olds read for fun almost every day. By 2023, that number was down to 14 percent. The media is now rife with essays by college professors lamenting the decline in their students’ abilities. The Chronicle of Higher Education told the story of Anya Galli Robertson, who teaches sociology at the University of Dayton. She gives similar lectures, assigns the same books and gives the same tests that she always has. Years ago, students could handle it; now they are floundering.
Last year The Atlantic published an essay by Rose Horowitch titled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” One professor recalled the lively classroom discussions of books like “Crime and Punishment.” Now the students say they can’t handle that kind of reading load.
The philosophy professor Troy Jollimore wrote in The Walrus: “I once believed my students and I were in this together, engaged in a shared intellectual pursuit. That faith has been obliterated over the past few semesters. It’s not just the sheer volume of assignments that appear to be entirely generated by A.I. — papers that show no sign the student has listened to a lecture, done any of the assigned reading or even briefly entertained a single concept from the course.”
Older people have always complained about “kids these days,” but this time we have empirical data to show that the observations are true.
What happens when people lose the ability to reason or render good judgments? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Donald Trump’s tariff policy. I’ve covered a lot of policies over the decades, some of which I supported and some of which I opposed. But I have never seen a policy as stupid as this one. It is based on false assumptions. It rests on no coherent argument in its favor. It relies on no empirical evidence. It has almost no experts on its side — from left, right or center. It is jumble-headedness exemplified. Trump himself personifies stupidity’s essential feature — self-satisfaction, an inability to recognize the flaws in your thinking. And of course when the approach led to absolutely predictable mayhem, Trump, lacking any coherent plan, backtracked, flip-flopped, responding impulsively to the pressures of the moment as his team struggled to keep up.
Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence.
Back in Homer’s day, people lived within an oral culture, then humans slowly developed a literate culture. Now we seem to be moving to a screen culture. Civilization was fun while it lasted.
New Pact Would Require Ships to Cut Emissions or Pay a Fee
A draft global agreement sets a fee for cargo ships, which carry the vast majority of world trade, to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.
By Somini Sengupta – April 11, 2025
The industry produces about 3 percent of planet-warming emissions globally, on par with aviation. A cargo ship near Vancouver, British Columbia. Credit…Alana Paterson for The New York Times
Amid the turmoil over global trade, countries around the world reached a remarkable, though modest, agreement Friday to reduce the climate pollution that comes from shipping those goods worldwide — with what is essentially a tax, no less.
A accord reached in London under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, would require every ship that ferries goods across the oceans to lower their greenhouse gas emissions or pay a fee.
The targets fall short of what many had hoped. Still, it’s the first time a global industry would face a price on its climate pollution no matter where in the world it operates. The proceeds would be used mainly to help the industry move to cleaner fuels. Some of it could also go to developing countries most vulnerable to climate hazards. The accord would come into effect in 2028, pending approval by country representatives at the agency’s next meeting in October.
The agreement marks a rare bit of international cooperation that’s all the more remarkable because it was reached even after the United States pulled out of the talks earlier in the week. No other countries followed suit.
“The U.S. is just one country and that one country cannot derail this entire process,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping director for Transport and Environment, a European advocacy group that has pushed for measures to clean up the maritime industry. “This will be first binding decision that will force shipping companies to decarbonize and switch to alternative fuels.”
The agreement applies to all ships, no matter whose flag they fly, including ships registered in the United States, although the vast majority of ships are flagged in other countries. It remained unclear whether or how Washington might respond to the fee agreement.
Officials at the State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ships mostly run on heavy fuel oil, sometimes called bunker fuel and more than 80 percent of global goods move by ships. The industry accounts for around 3 percent of global greenhouse emissions, comparable to the emissions from aviation.
The agreement reached Friday is far less ambitious than one initially proposed by a group of island nations who had suggested a universal assessment on emissions.
After two years of negotiations, the proposal sets out a complicated two-tiered system of fees. It sets carbon intensity targets, which are like clean-fuel standards for cars and trucks. Ships using conventional shipping oil would have to pay a higher fee ($380 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent produced) while ships that use a less carbon-intensive fuel mix would have to pay a lower fee ($100 for every metric ton that exceeds the fuel standard threshold).
It is expected to raise $11 billion to $13 billion a year, according to the Organization’s estimates.
“It is a positive outcome,” said Arsenio Dominguez, the organization’s secretary-general. “This is a long journey. This is not going to happen overnight. There are many concerns, particularly from developing countries.”
The threshold would get stricter over time. It could allow the industry to switch to biofuels to meet the standards. That is a contentious approach, since biofuels are made from crops, and growing more crops to make fuel could contribute to deforestation.
The new shipping-fuel standards are meant to spur the development of alternative fuels, including hydrogen.
There were objections from many quarters. Developing countries with maritime fleets said they would be unfairly punished because they have older fleets. Countries like Saudi Arabia, which ship huge quantities of oil, and China, which exports everything from plastic toys to electric cars worldwide, balked at proposals to set a higher price, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
“They turned away a proposal for a reliable source of revenue for those of us in dire need of finance to help with climate impacts,” said Ralph Regenvanu, the climate minister for Vanuatu, in a statement after the vote.
In the end, countries that voted in favor of the compromise agreement included China and the European Union. Saudi Arabia and Russia voted against it.
The United States pulled out of the talks entirely.
Projections by the International Chamber of Shipping, an industry body, found that it would have a negligible effect on prices. “We recognize that this may not be the agreement which all sections of the industry would have preferred, and we are concerned that this may not yet go far enough in providing the necessary certainty,” said Guy Platten, the council’s secretary general. “But it is a framework which we can build upon.”
Claire Brown contributed reporting.
Somini Sengupta is the international climate reporter on the Times climate team.
Inside Elon Musk’s Gleeful Destruction of the Government
Miles Klee, Andrew Perez, Asawin Suebsaeng and Meagan Jordan – April 10, 2025
Ben Vizzachero had his dream job, working as a wildlife biologist with the Los Padres National Forest in California. He was moving up the ladder, had recently received a positive performance review, and was “making the world a better place,” he says.
Yet, over Presidents’ Day weekend in February, Donald Trump’s administration told Vizzachero he was being let go for his “performance.” Vizzachero was one of many thousands of “probationary” federal workers who were baselessly fired by Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency as part of Trump’s effort to purge the federal workforce and make it more MAGA.
It was crushing. “My job is my identity,” Vizzachero says. “How I’ve defined myself since I was five years old is that I love birds and bird-watching.” Talking with Rolling Stone in March, following his firing, he wondered what would happen to his health insurance and whether he would need to move in with his parents.
When a Democratic lawmaker invited Vizzachero as a guest to Trump’s joint address to Congress in March, he found himself seated near Musk. He took the opportunity to confront the world’s richest man. According to Vizzachero, he described his job to Musk and asked: “Am I waste?”
He says Musk, “with a very condescending smirk,” hit him with a line from the 1999 movie Office Space: “What would you say you do here?”
It was a dubious callback to the scene in which a pair of management consultants interview a worker and force him to justify his job before he’s fired. Like countless Wall Street traders who took the wrong lesson from Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” speech, Musk missed the point of Office Space: that corporate culture is dehumanizing, and bosses like him are odious cretins.
Soon after Trump’s and Republicans’ 2024 wins, which Musk supported with $290 million in political spending, the Tesla CEO publicly mused about using this line from Office Space on federal workers. He posted it in November on X, the social media platform he owns, with a laugh-crying emoji, resharing his earlier post of an AI-generated image in which he’s seated at a conference table behind a placard that reads “DOGE.” Two weeks later, Musk announced, “I rewatched Office Space tonight for the 5th time to prepare for @DOGE!” The billionaire reportedly had a DOGE T-shirt made, emblazoned with his favorite line. And one weekend in February, Musk threatened to fire every federal worker who failed to respond to an email asking them, “What did you do last week?”
Musk and the White House did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
“The American people are saying, you know what, Elon Musk? We believe you to be a liar.”
Everett Kelley
With DOGE, Musk has gleefully banished tens of thousands of federal employees, canceled lifesaving aid, and repeatedly threatened America’s safety-net programs, all as part of a purported hunt for waste, fraud, and abuse. He’s governed as an out-of-touch corporate villain, laughing about this carnage while partying, posting, delivering big payments to voters (although the amounts mean virtually nothing to him), and cashing in on new contracts and business opportunities — sometimes appearing high out of his mind. Even administration officials and Trump loyalists on Capitol Hill joke about the latest outrages of “Prime Minister Musk.” At every turn in his crusade of destruction, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has dared the courts and a weak Democratic opposition to stop him.
But it didn’t take long for ordinary Americans to get pissed off, with protests against DOGE, Musk, and his companies erupting nationwide. “The American people are saying, you know what, Elon Musk?” says Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a federal labor union that has brought legal challenges against the Trump administration on behalf of the more than 820,000 workers across government agencies it represents. “We’re not buying what you’re selling. We believe you to be a liar.”
Organizers have mounted a “Tesla Takedown” campaign, with tens of thousands around the globe showing up at dealerships to condemn DOGE, according to the group. They have encouraged Tesla owners to sell their cars and stockholders to dump their shares, since much of Musk’s wealth comes from his stake in the electric-vehicle manufacturer.
“People have asked, ‘What is DOGE?’ ” says a retiree at an anti-Tesla protest in Los Angeles in March, explaining that she and her husband are trying to “educate people” about the harm Musk’s pet project is causing. Passing motorists honk in support of the approximately 25 people gathered at a Tesla center despite the rain. Some hold signs denouncing Musk as a Nazi (he has denied any association with Nazism), while another poster at the rally simply reads: “Not Sure About This Elon Guy.”
“There is a growing movement to divest, Tesla stock is in a precipitous decline,” says actor and writer Alex Winter, who launched Tesla Takedown with other activists in February. “Things are moving in the right direction.”
‘Crazy Uncle Elon’
Prior to Trump’s inauguration, observers weren’t sure how seriously to take the idea of a Musk-led government-efficiency commission, but the billionaire and DOGE have been at the vanguard of Trump’s shockingly lawless second administration.
Musk has spearheaded the president’s purge of the federal workforce and his efforts to consolidate information and power over federal funds — despite never being elected, appointed, or confirmed to hold such a pivotal role. Musk is technically a “special government employee,” a designation that allowed him to bypass a Senate confirmation process and avoid publicly reporting his financial holdings.
DOGE was created by renaming the U.S. Digital Service and moving it under the executive office in an apparent bid to circumvent public-record laws. The ethics watchdog American Oversight has sued to force the group to comply with those laws and preserve materials subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. “The public deserves to know the full extent of the damage,” said interim Executive Director Chioma Chukwu in a statement on an April court order requiring DOGE to fulfill this legal obligation.
Trump and Musk have tried to grant the new office expansive authorities never envisioned by Congress, including the ability to “impound,” or freeze, funds appropriated by lawmakers. Experts say the arrangement is unconstitutional on several levels — as are DOGE’s mass firings and its attempts to shutter or pause the work of whole government agencies. A lawsuit brought by personnel of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) laid out many of these arguments, contending that “Musk has acted as an officer of the United States without having been duly appointed to such a role,” and that DOGE “acted to eliminate USAID, a federal agency created by statute, where only Congress may do so.” A federal judge in Maryland agreed, finding that Musk and DOGE likely violated the Constitution as they dismantled the office. Another judge ordered the Trump administration to rehire thousands of probationary employees terminated by DOGE. (As of publication, the legal battle is ongoing.)
Vizzachero, the wildlife biologist, was among those rehired. The administration is still moving ahead with even larger mass firings.
“I am become meme. There’s living the dream, and living the meme, and that’s what’s happening.”
Elon Musk
Musk and his lieutenants — many pulled from his own companies, others young techie college dropouts lacking in government experience — have demanded unprecedented access to sensitive personal information and government payment systems, leading to still more legal challenges. Federal judges havefound that Trump’s administration likely violated privacy and administrative laws when it gave DOGE sweeping access to personal, private data held by the Social Security Administration, the Treasury Department, and the Education Department. Regardless, DOGE has continued to operate with the same playbook Musk used after acquiring Twitter, showing a zeal for speedy terminations and little regard for how departments function.
Throughout the chaos and confusion of Trump’s return to power, Musk also strove to cultivate the image he’s long maintained as a workhorse, showman, and expert in varied fields. He reportedly told friends he was sleeping at DOGE offices, rehashing claims he previously made about sleeping on a Tesla factory floor. He’s continually posted grandiose and often inaccurate estimates of how much money DOGE has saved.
And he seemed to relish his role as an all-powerful agitator. Musk began regularly smearing his enemies as “retards” on X and targeting judges who ruled against the administration or blocked DOGE’s incursions. He grew bold enough to describe Social Security, long considered untouchable, as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Onstage at Trump’s post-inauguration event, Musk threw a straight-armed salute to the crowd, then responded to the ensuing backlash with a series of puns on names of high-ranking Nazis from Adolf Hitler’s inner circle. Speaking virtually to the far-right German political party Alternative für Deutschland, Musk argued that Germany had placed “too much of a focus on past guilt.”
At the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Musk waved around a chain saw he said would slice through “bureaucracy” — this on the same day that his former partner Grimes publicly begged him on X to respond to her about a medical crisis experienced by one of their three children.
“I am become meme,” he said onstage. “I’m living the meme. You know, it’s like, there’s living the dream, and there’s living the meme, and that’s pretty much what’s happening.”
The bizarre CPAC appearance prompted speculation about Musk’s state of mind and recreational drug use, as he was wearing sunglasses inside and had difficulty stringing sentences together. People close to Musk have told The Wall Street Journal they have known him to use illegal drugs, including LSD, cocaine, Ecstasy, and mushrooms — a source of concern for some of the board members overseeing his companies. (Musk has denied using illegal drugs, though he has spoken about his use of prescription ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic.)
Some senior Trump administration officials and Cabinet members have found themselves deeply annoyed by Musk. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, three people familiar with the matter say, hasn’t hidden his disdain for Musk, with some State Department officials nicknaming the Tesla billionaire “Crazy Uncle Elon,” two of those sources tell Rolling Stone.
“I have been in the same room with Elon, and he always tries to be funny. And he’s not funny. Like, at all,” says a senior Trump administration official. “He makes these jokes and little asides and smiles and then looks almost hurt if you don’t lap up his humor. I keep using the word ‘annoying’; a lot of people who have to deal with him do. But the word doesn’t do the situation justice. Elon just thinks he’s smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it, even when it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Musk has gnawed at the patience of an array of high-ranking administration officials, to the point that — according to this official and two others — Trump lieutenants have walked out of meetings and earnestly asked one another if they thought Musk was high. Administration officials joked to one another about subjecting Musk to mandatory drug testing, which Musk himself has said would be a “great idea” for federal employees. (A lawyer for Musk has said he’s “regularly and randomly drug-tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test.”)
“Talking to the guy is sometimes like listening to really rusty nails on a chalkboard,” says the senior Trump administration official, who adds that Musk is not much of a team player, either. “He’s just the most irritating person I’ve ever had to deal with, and that is saying something.”
‘Why Do These Fucking Kids Know This?’
With Trump’s blessing, Musk has engineered a climate of fear that has infected nearly every corner of the U.S. executive branch. When DOGE’s “nerd army” has moved to take over federal agencies, if their demands are not immediately met, Musk’s minions have snapped at senior government officials: “Do I need to call Elon?”
The emails that Musk has had sent to federal employees have been so intentionally dickish that several have produced an avalanche of what one Trump administration official called “very rude” pranks and replies. Some of these crass responses include — per messages reviewed by Rolling Stone — graphic sexual images, including content involving urine and feces.
“I know Elon probably won’t see it, but I hope he sees it,” says one now-former federal employee, who says they replied to one such email with an image of a human butthole.
Musk is apparently amused by the unrest. Aside from his public memeing, when he has privately messaged associates and confidants about reports from federal staffers about how their lives have been wrecked, the Tesla CEO has been known to react with laugh-crying emojis, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
The tech oligarch has repeatedly warned that millions of Americans over the age of 100 are receiving benefits — a flagrant misrepresentation of agency data. Trump has run with this falsehood, too, even as his acting Social Security commissioner has acknowledged that these people “are not necessarily receiving benefits.”
Musk has claimed there are “extreme levels of fraud” in Social Security — though he and DOGE haven’t provided any evidence. He’s argued, without basis, that hundreds of billions in fraud per year are going to undocumented immigrants from entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The constant griping about entitlements is making an impact: When people lose their Social Security benefits, they are blamingMusk and DOGE.
Two administration officials and another Trump adviser tell Rolling Stone that when Musk has publicly decried Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” some close to Trump have tried to diplomatically remind Musk that this could be damaging politically.
“He’s the most irritating person I’ve ever had to deal with, and that’s saying something.”
Senior Trump Administration Official
“We like winning elections, and you may have noticed that a lot of our voters are elderly,” the Trump adviser notes. The complaint from Trumpland brass about Musk’s inability to absorb or entertain new information is a common one.
According to the Trump adviser and an administration official, the DOGE captain has stubbornly responded with comments like, “It is a Ponzi scheme, though.” (It is not.)
As Musk and his minions claim they’re hunting for wasteful spending, the tech mogul is vying for new contracts at agencies that regulate his many business interests — a situation that poses obvious conflicts of interest. The Trump White House has asserted that Musk can police his own conflicts, and excuse himself from DOGE’s work overseeing certain contracts if he believes it’s necessary.
As part of their purge, Musk and DOGE fired hundreds of probationary employees at the Federal Aviation Administration, which last year proposed fining Musk’s SpaceX for regulatory and safety violations. Musk also pressured the last FAA administrator to resign, leaving it without leadership when an Army helicopter and commercial jet collided over the Potomac River near D.C. in January, killing 67 people.
The agency has started utilizing Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet service, to help upgrade the systems it uses to manage America’s airspace. Musk has tried to spin this as charity, posting that “Starlink terminals are being sent at NO COST to the taxpayer on an emergency basis to restore air-traffic-control connectivity.” However, as Rolling Stone has reported, FAA officials quietly directed staff to quickly locate tens of millions of dollars to fund a Starlink deal.
The New York Times separately reported in March that Starlink is now being used on the White House campus, despite security concerns. Trump’s Department of Defense just awarded SpaceX billions more in contracts to put sensitive military satellites in space. DOGE is reportedly using Musk’s Grok AI chatbot liberally as it slashes the government.
Two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that Musk’s DOGE staffers have grilled DOD employees about the Golden Dome project, Trump’s fantastical proposal to build a space-based missile-defense system to protect the entire United States — an idea ready-made for Starlink. Their questions were so specific that Pentagon officials wondered if the DOGE staff had access to highly sensitive and guarded information.
“Why do these fucking kids know this?” is how one of the sources describes their bewilderment at the time.
With DOGE, Musk has effectively infiltrated agencies that are supposed to oversee his businesses. This situation creates risk, experts say — as officials may not feel like they can scrutinize Musk’s businesses too closely. Case in point: In late February, the FAA cleared SpaceX to launch another unmanned test flight of its Starship rocket, a month after one exploded. Starship exploded again midair, raining debris over Florida and the Caribbean and disrupting nearly 500 flights.
The FAA’s probe of the first explosion concluded that the probable cause was “stronger than anticipated vibrations during flight.” The agency noted that SpaceX had “implemented corrective actions” prior to launching the second rocket, which exploded too.
‘Nobody Elected’ Musk
Musk’s unprecedented attack on the government has not gone without answer from average Americans, who have mobilized mass protests focused on DOGE and Tesla. Republican lawmakers holding town-hall events have had constituents show up to berate them over Musk, booing his name and denouncing his cuts. By early March, House Speaker Mike Johnson was telling his GOP colleagues to skip such events.
Demonstrations, meanwhile, spilled into the streets. “DOGE is illegitimate. Congress has not authorized them,” a federal worker at a March protest on the National Mall told Rolling Stone. The action saw significant support from veterans due to DOGE’s cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs. “Fuck Musk,” says another attendee, whose relative is a government contract worker. She notes that “nobody elected” Musk.
As Musk’s DOGE continues to slash jobs, a protest movement against him is brewing.
The White House and Trump law-enforcement officials have moved to crack down on Tesla vandals. At a Tesla showcase that Trump held on the White House driveway with Musk, the president said the attackers should be considered domestic terrorists. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that three individuals suspected of carrying out arson attacks on Tesla properties were facing sentences of up to 20 years. The FBI launched a task force to look at anti-Tesla violence.
Trump also suggested that individuals arrested for these crimes should be sent to prison in El Salvador.
What’s $1 Million?
Amid rising public anger about his role and influence, Musk held a town hall in late March in Green Bay, Wisconsin. More than 1,000 supporters joined him, as hundreds protested outside in the ice-cold rain.
The protesters were there to vent their anger about Musk’s attempts to buy a state Supreme Court seat. The tech billionaire — through his Super PAC, America PAC — had been offering voters $100 to sign a petition decrying so-called activist judges. Only petition signers could attend the town hall. Musk had announced he would give away checks for $1 million to two event attendees.
One protester, holding a sign that said “X-LAX needed to eliminate Musk,” told Rolling Stone that Musk had “no business in Wisconsin trying to influence votes.” Another held a sign declaring, “Packer fans don’t like Nazis,” with a picture of Musk’s straight-armed salute.
Inside, Musk appeared onstage donning a Packers-style cheesehead hat before signing it and throwing it into the crowd.
Shortly afterward, he brought two winners out to collect the $1 million checks. He admitted to the audience that the point of them is “just to get attention.” He laughed about how paying voters this way “causes the legacy media to kind of lose their minds.”
While $1 million would be a life-changing sum for most people, it means shockingly little to a man who was reportedly worth $316 billion at the end of March. One of these checks is equivalent to just over 60 cents for him, when you compare his net worth with that of the median American. (The $290 million that Musk spent to elect Trump and Republicans was equivalent to roughly $214 for him at the time — less than an average family’s weekly grocery bill.)
“I would thank him for radicalizing me. I had never attended a protest until I was fired.”
Ben Vizzachero
At his town hall, Musk — an immigrant — launched into a tirade about noncitizens receiving Social Security numbers, standing in front of a chart purporting to show a big spike under Democrats. In reality, legal immigrants are given Social Security numbers so they can pay taxes; this process was in fact made automatic during Trump’s first term. The crowd gasped as Musk gave them the false impression that DOGE had finally found real fraud in Social Security.
When Musk was interrupted by protesters, he joked that they were operatives funded by Democratic mega-donor George Soros — yes, inside the event filled with people he was paying $100 to sign his petition, where he also gave away $2 million.
Throughout the night, Musk argued that the Wisconsin Supreme Court election would have major implications not just for the state or the country, but possibly the world — if Democrats won, he argued, Republicans could lose two congressional seats.
Two days later, Wisconsin voters convincingly rejected Musk’s candidate, Brad Schimel, by 10 points. The election was a referendum on Musk — and he lost big.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly, a Wisconsin OB-GYN who serves on the board for the Committee to Protect Health Care and campaigned against Schimel, tells Rolling Stone, “Authenticity is incredibly important to Wisconsinites, and that is what Elon Musk completely lacked: any sense of authenticity.”
After Musk’s epic fail, word trickled out that he could soon leave the Trump administration. It wasn’t a surprise — special government employees are supposed to serve for 130 days or less per year. Musk’s effect on the government and its workers will linger.
On April 5, as a wave of “Hands Off!” protests coalesced against Trump and Musk in every state and cities around the world, Rolling Stone spoke again with Vizzachero. He was getting ready to speak at one of these rallies in California. (Now that he’s been rehired, he says, “the statements that I’m making to you are my personal opinions.”)
He reads his planned speech over the phone. He talks about how environmental and conservation laws brought back the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon, and restored America’s public lands. “The Trump administration wants to exploit and abuse our public lands so that they can make billionaires like Elon Musk even richer,” he says.
It’s been a month since his run-in with Musk. He says he’s “kind of grateful.”
If he saw Musk again now, Vizzachero says, “I would thank him for radicalizing me, because I had actually never attended a protest until a week after I got fired. I spent a long time sitting on the sidelines thinking there’s so much bad stuff happening. He gave me the push that I needed to use my voice to speak up and speak out.”
