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The idea that millions of dead Americans are receiving Social Security checks is shocking, and bolsters the argument that the federal bureaucracy needs radical change to combat waste and fraud. There’s one big problem: No evidence exists that it’s true.
Despite being told by agency staff last month that this claim has no basis in fact, Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have continued to use the talking point as a pretext to attack America’s highest-spending government program. Musk seems to have gotten this idea from a list of Social Security recipients who did not have a death date attached to their record. Agency employees reportedly explained to Musk’s DOGE team in February that the list of impossibly ancient individuals they found were not necessarily receiving benefits (the lack of death dates was related to an outdated system).
And yet, in his speech to Congress last week, Trump stated: “Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old.” He said the list includes “3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149,” among other 100-plus age ranges, and that “money is being paid to many of them, and we’re searching right now.” In an interview with Fox Business on Monday, Musk discussed the existence of “20 million people who are definitely dead, marked as alive” in the Social Security database. And DOGE has dispatched 10 employees to try to find evidence of the claims that dead Americans are receiving checks, according to documents filed in court on Wednesday.
Musk and Trump have long maintained that they do not plan to attack Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the major entitlement programs. But their repeated claims that rampant fraud exists within these entitlement systems undermine those assurances. In his Fox interview on Monday, Musk said, “Waste and fraud in entitlement spending—which is most of the federal spending, is entitlements—so that’s like the big one to eliminate. That’s the sort of half trillion, maybe $600, $700 billion a year.” Some observers interpreted this confusing sentence to mean that Musk wants to cut the entitlement programs themselves. But the Trump administration quickly downplayed Musk’s comments, insisting that the federal government will continue to protect such programs and suggesting that Musk had been talking about the need to eliminate fraud in the programs, not about axing them. “What kind of a person doesn’t support eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending?” the White House asked in a press release.
The White House’s question would be a lot easier to answer if Musk, who has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” wasn’t wildly overestimating the amount of fraud in entitlement programs. Musk is claiming waste in these programs on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, but a 2024 Social Security Administration report found that the agency lost closer to $70 billion total in improper payments from 2015 to 2022, which accounts for about 1 percent of Social Security payments. Leland Dudek, a mid-level civil servant elevated to temporarily lead Social Security after being put on administrative leave for sharing information with DOGE, pushed back last week on the idea that the agency is overrun with fraud and that dead people older than 100 are getting payments, ProPublica reported after obtaining a recording of a closed-door meeting. DOGE’s false claim about dead people receiving benefits “got in front of us,” one of Dudek’s deputies reportedly said, but “it’s a victory that you’re not seeing more [misinformation], because they are being educated.” (Dudek did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.)
Some 7 million Americans rely on Social Security benefits for more than 90 percent of their income, and 54 million individuals and their dependents receive retirement payments from the agency. Even if Musk doesn’t eliminate the agency, his tinkering could still affect all of those Americans’ lives. On Wednesday, DOGE dialed back its plans to cut off much of Social Security’s phone services (a commonly used alternative to its online programs, particularly for elderly and disabled Americans), though it still plans to restrict recipients’ ability to change bank-deposit information over the phone.
In recent weeks, confusion has rippled through the Social Security workforce and the public; many people drop off forms in person, but office closures could disrupt that. According to ProPublica, several IT contracts have been cut or scaled back, and several employees reported that their tech systems are crashing every day. Thousands of jobs are being cut, including in regional field offices, and the entire Social Security staff has been offered buyouts (today is the deadline for workers to take them). Martin O’Malley, a former commissioner of the agency, has warned that the workforce reductions that DOGE is seeking at Social Security could trigger “system collapse and an interruption of benefits” within the next one to three months.
In going anywhere near Social Security—in saying the agency’s name in the same sentence as the word eliminate—Musk is venturing further than any presidential administration has in recent decades. Entitlement benefits are extremely popular, and cutting the programs has long been a nonstarter. When George W. Bush raised the idea of partially privatizing entitlements in 2005, the proposal died before it could make it to a vote in the House or Senate.
The DOGE plan to cut $1 trillion in spending while leaving entitlements, which make up the bulk of the federal budget, alone always seemed implausible. In the November Wall Street Journalop-ed announcing the DOGE initiative, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (who is no longer part of DOGE) wrote that those who say “we can’t meaningfully close the federal deficit without taking aim at entitlement programs” are deflecting “attention from the sheer magnitude of waste, fraud and abuse” that “DOGE aims to address.” But until there’s clear evidence that this “magnitude” of fraud exists within Social Security, such claims enable Musk to poke at what was previously untouchable.
The question of the day is whether the United States is embroiled in a constitutional crisis.
Consider the circumstances. Congress has essentially surrendered its power of the purse to an unelected co-president who has seized control of much of the federal bureaucracy. The actual president has asserted a unilateral executive authority so powerful and far-reaching that it threatens the republican character of the American political system. And that president has taken actions — such as an attempt to unravel birthright citizenship — that blatantly and flagrantly violate the Constitution.
But as critics of the crisis view note, for all of his lawbreaking, transgression and overreach, the president has yet to take the steps that would clearly mark a constitutional crisis — openly defying a lower court order or, more significantly, a judgment of the Supreme Court.
One thing the language of crisis captures, however, is the degree to which the American political system is under a tremendous amount of stress. And to the extent that this stress threatens the integrity of the constitutional order, it is because the American system is, and has been, in a profound state of disrepair. If we are in or approaching a constitutional crisis, it has been a long time coming.
In 2009 the legal scholars Jack M. Balkin and Sanford Levinson published an article on constitutional crises titled, aptly enough, “Constitutional Crises.”
The aim of their argument was to distinguish ordinary (or even extraordinary) political conflict from a breakdown in the operation of the constitutional system.
“When constitutional design functions properly — even if people strongly disagree with and threaten each other — there is no crisis,” Balkin and Levinson explained. “On the other hand, when the system of constitutional design breaks down, either because people abandon it or because it is leading them off of the proverbial cliff, disagreements and threats take on a special urgency that deserves the name of ‘crisis.’”
A crisis occurs, to put it a little differently, when a constitution fails to achieve its primary task, which is to channel political disagreement into ordinary politics. It’s when disagreement begins to break down into violence — into anarchy or civil war — that you have a constitutional crisis.
From here, Balkin and Levinson offered a typology of democratic constitutional crises (primarily in the United States, although this extends to other constitutional democracies as well). There is the “Type 1” crisis in which political leaders have publicly claimed “the right to suspend features of the Constitution in order to preserve the overall social order and to meet the exigencies of the moment.” In this kind of crisis, a president has essentially claimed the sovereign power to declare a state of exception, acting, in Locke’s words, “without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it.”
No president has ever claimed the right to act outside the Constitution. Instead, those presidents who have sought to expand their power tend to frame their actions as the necessary exercise of legitimate authority. Prominent examples include Abraham Lincoln at the start of the Civil War and, more recently, George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the “Type 2” crisis, political leaders do not abandon the Constitution so much as refuse to break with a failing constitutional order. “If Type 1 crises feature actors who publicly depart from fidelity to the Constitution,” Balkin and Levinson wrote, “Type 2 crises arise from excess fidelity, where political actors adhere to what they perceive to be their constitutional duties even though the heavens fall.”
If there is a paradigmatic example of this crisis in American history, it can be found in the secession crisis of 1860 to early 1861, when President James Buchanan stood by as Southern secessionists seized federal armories and prepared for war.
The third and final category of constitutional crisis that Balkin and Levinson discussed involves a situation in which “the relevant actors all proclaim their constitutional fidelity” but “disagree about what the Constitution requires and about who holds the appropriate degree of power.” What distinguishes this from ordinary disagreements is the willingness to go outside of normal politics to resolve the conflict, up to and including the use of violence.
You can see this type of crisis in the struggle over Reconstruction, when recalcitrant Southern white people took up arms to challenge and overthrow the postwar biracial political order.
“Constitutional Crises” was something of an incongruous argument to be making, given the rise of Barack Obama, whose presidency opened with a sense of promise and optimism about the future. The mood and circumstances were a little more appropriate eight years later when, at the start of the first Trump administration, Balkin followed up on this exploration of constitutional crises with an article on what he evocatively termed “constitutional rot.”
If a constitutional crisis is an acute event — brought on by external shock or internal breakdown — then constitutional rot is something like a chronic illness. It is, Balkin wrote, “the degradation of constitutional norms that may operate over a long period.”
You may, at this late date, be tired of talking about norms, but it is true that constitutional democracies depend on them for their survival. A successful republic rests on well-functioning institutions that structure ambition and the acquisition of political power. It demands a certain amount of forbearance from both political leaders and ordinary citizens when it comes to the use of that power. Politics cannot be a winner-take-all game.
Above all, constitutional democracy requires a broad commitment to the public good, or what we might describe as civic virtue — a particular obsession of America’s revolutionary generation. This includes ordinary people, who have a responsibility to keep themselves informed and engaged, as well as elected officials, who are entrusted with the public good and thus the obligation to further the common interest rather than the most narrow concerns of themselves or their allies. Even our system, designed to harness ambition so that the “interest of the man” is “connected with the constitutional rights of the place,” according to Federalist No. 51, depends on a certain amount of selflessness from those who choose public service.
Constitutional rot is when all of this begins to deteriorate. It’s when government officials reject the public good in favor of the private interests of their supporters and financial backers, when institutions fail to address public problems, when political actors embrace a nihilistic ethos of winning regardless of the damage it might do to the overall health of the political system, and when politicians reject any and all limits on their use of power and try to insulate themselves from accountability, democratic or otherwise.
Each dynamic eats at the foundation of constitutional government. And like the rot that afflicts the sill plate of an old home, it will undermine the entire structure if left to grow and fester.
If we use the typology Balkin and Levinson outlined, then it is a little hard to say that the United States is experiencing a constitutional crisis. For as much as Donald Trump has centered his second term on a radical assertion of executive power, he has not yet claimed to be above or beyond the Constitution. His view, in fact, is that he has “an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” (This is wrong, of course, but it means something, even still, that the White House is trying to ground its claims within the existing political order.)
The Constitution also isn’t, at this moment, faltering on the shoals of a political, social or economic crisis, and our political leaders have not turned to extraconstitutional methods to try to resolve their conflicts.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether the current circumstances constitute a constitutional crisis. But it is extremely difficult to deny the extent to which the constitutional order is rotting from the inside out.
You can see it in the wide and widening gap between what the public wants from its government and what that government is able to deliver. You can see it in the vulgar influence peddling and outright looting that passes for normal behavior in Washington. You can see it in the catastrophic weakness of both political parties, whether it’s a Republican Party so hollowed out by extremism and in thrall to the ultrarich that it was easy pickings for a populist demagogue and his wealthy backers or a Democratic Party whose feckless leadership class is more concerned with securing its personal influence than building the kind of organization that can construct and mobilize popular majorities.
You can see it in the failure of the American political class to deal with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — a system-level threat to constitutional government whose ringleader was allowed to run, a third time, for president — and you can see it in that president’s easy seizure of the power of purse. The fact that Elon Musk, a de facto prime minister acting with the authority of the president, can cancel federal programs without a peep from the majority in Congress is a sign of constitutional rot. The fact that Republicans in Congress would rather beg Musk for a reprieve than assert the power of their institution is also a sign of constitutional rot setting in even further. And the fact that so many of our institutions are treating Trump’s executive decrees as laws — bending to and indulging his whims as if he were sovereign, as if he were a king and not a president — is a sign of constitutional rot.
Constitutional rot can lead to constitutional crisis. At the same time, not every house that rots at its foundation falls apart. Some become uninhabitable even as they appear otherwise. So it goes for a republic. We may retain the appearance of a constitutional democracy even as the rot corrodes the freedoms and values that give that term its weight and meaning. We’ve already reached the stage, after all, where the ruling regime attempts to deport one of its most vocal and vulnerable critics.
With a house, there is only one thing to do about rot. Tear it up. Remove it. And replace it with something new. If our political system — if our constitutional order — is too rotted through to secure freedom, equality and the blessings of liberty, then perhaps it’s time to rethink what it is we want out of American democracy.
A 19-year-old who was reportedly fired from an internship for leaking internal information to competitors is now a DOGE ‘senior advisor’ in the State Department
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez – March 13, 2025
Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting measures are being implemented across government agencies.
Teenager Edward Coristine, a member of the DOGE team, is now a senior advisoer in several federal departments thanks to Elon Musk. Coristine was previously fired from an internship for reportedly leaking information to competitors. He also worked briefly at Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink.
Thanks to Elon Musk, a teenager with a rocky track record now wields significant influence in the federal government as a senior advisor in multiple departments.
Edward Coristine, 19, was most recently a freshman mechanical engineering and physics major at Boston’s Northeastern University until joining Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team at DOGE. The department has been busy in recent weeks conducting mass layoffs and scaling back federal spending.
Now Coristine is reportedly a senior advisor at both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security as part of DOGE’s department overlapping cost-cutting efforts, the WashingtonPost reported. Coristine is also listed as one of several “experts” at the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s HR department, Wiredreported.
Coristine is the son of Charles Coristine, the CEO of organic-snack company LesserEvil; Charles Coristine bought the company in 2011 after quitting his job at Morgan Stanley. The company has been profitable since 2021, CNBCreported.
The younger Coristine took a leap into government after he previously interned at technology security company Path Network and worked briefly at Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink, according to Bloomberg.
Coristine was reportedly fired from his internship at Path Network after he allegedly leaked information to competitors, Bloomberg reported. Coristine later posted on instant-messaging platform Discord that he did “nothing contractually wrong” while working at Path Network, according to Bloomberg.
Coristine did not return messages seeking comment. DOGE and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
At the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, Coristine potentially has access to sensitive information, according to Bloomberg. Democratic senators, including Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), have already spoken out with concern about DOGE’s considerable reach and its cost-cutting mission.
“Giving Elon Musk’s goon squad access to systems that control payments to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other key federal programs is a national security nightmare,” Wyden told Bloomberg.
The Washington Post identified at least six engineers under the age of 25 working for Musk’s DOGE. One of the engineers, 25-year-old Marko Elez, resigned after the Wall Street Journalreported on alleged past posts that were racist in nature. Musk said later in a post on X he would rehire Elez, because “to err is human, to forgive divine.” Elez has been reportedly reinstated at the Social Security Administration, according to Bloomberg.
Coristine also has a history of controversial and offensive posts, according to Substack newsletter MuskWatch, which tracks the activities of Elon Musk.
Gov. Tim Walz launching town hall tour in Republican House districts
Tommy Wiita – March 13, 2025
Gov. Tim Walz is planning stops at House districts around the United States represented by Republicans who have stopped holding town halls due to ongoing backlash to federal cuts by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.
Walz announced the tour of red states on Wednesday, with the move a significant indicator that he intends to run for president in 2028, after his time as Kamala Harris’ running mate in 2024.
Walz is planning stops beginning on Friday in Iowa’s 3rd District, which is represented by Rep. Zach Nunn, and will then head to Nebraska’s 2nd District, home to Rep. Don Bacon, according to national media reports. His office also has stops planned in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ohio as well.
“I’m going to go out there and make sure those folks down in Iowa know that their [Rep. Nunn] doesn’t want to come talk to them but he voted for this stuff,” Walz said during an appearance on MSNBC. “He voted to defund these things, he voted to make it impossible to talk to the VA and cut 70,000 people to care for our veterans. By the way, many of those 70,000 are veterans themselves.”
“So I think again this is us going out and talking to people, making the case that people are absolutely clear that both parties are not the same: one stands with Elon Musk, the billionaires and the dismantling of America as we know it, and one that’s going to be there for their families. And if we’re not out there, Donald Trump, all the podcasts, all the money will fill that void … I hope people show up at that town hall and say, ‘look governor, what are you offering? Are you offering anything better?’ That’s fair. But to turn your back and not do it, it’s dangerous.”
But Walz’s announcement has drawn criticism from Republicans in Minnesota, with state Rep. Zach Duckworth accusing him of abandoning Minnesota at a time it is facing a $6 billion budget deficit by 2029.
“All great selfless leaders leave their job during its most critical moments – like solving a $6 Billion deficit they created,” he said. “Abandoning Minnesota mid session when the real work is about to begin is publicly admitting you’re not needed and have no interest in actually governing.”
Walz aims to fill void after Republican advice on town halls
It’s been reported that Republicans representatives have been advised by NRCC chairperson Rep. Richard Hudson to not hold town halls going forward due to backlash over the Trump administration’s policies.
It follows a series of high-profile confrontations at Republican town halls held across the U.S., which saw representatives assailed by local residents angry by the scale and severity of the cuts and layoffs being imposed by the administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Musk.
Walz reacted to the NRCC’s order on Twitter, suggesting that he would host an event in a district a Republican currently holds to gain more support for Democrats.
“That’s a shame. If your Republican representative won’t meet with you because their agenda is so unpopular, maybe a Democrat will,” Walz said. “Hell, maybe I will. If your congressman refuses to meet, I’ll come host an event in their district to help local Democrats beat ‘em.”
Walz later told CNN he had been overwhelmed by the response to that tweet, saying his staff has been sifting through “hundreds of invitations from local party leaders and candidates asking him to come.”
Outside of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been holding events in Republican districts for the past several weeks, no other major Democratic leaders have done the same.
Minnesota currently has four congressional districts controlled by Republicans: Rep. Brad Finstad in the 1st Congressional District; Rep. Tom Emmer in the 6th Congressional District; Rep. Michelle Fischbach in the 7th Congressional District; and Rep. Pete Stauber in the 8th Congressional District. It’s unclear if Walz intends to visit any, some or all of these districts during his tour.
The Minnesota governor told CNN he intends to tell voters that it “doesn’t have to be this way,” referencing this week’s move by the administration to slash the U.S. Department of Education in half.
On Wednesday, Walz called out the Trump administration’s firing of nearly half the Department of Education, saying it will have a “detrimental impact on children.”
“This is undermining our economic wellbeing for the future, it’s undermining our competitive advantage, and it’s undermining the moral authority that every child truly matters. So what Donald Trump continues to do is the idiocy of whatever he thinks at the time is a good talking point,” Walz said during a Democratic Governors call held on Wednesday.
Gov. Tim Walz speaks in Bloomington, Minn. on Aug. 1, 2024. Photo courtesy of Office of Governor Tim Walz via Flickr.
Kremlin told U.S. it didn’t want Trump’s Ukraine-Russia envoy at peace talks
Keir Simmons – March 13, 2025
President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia was excluded from high-level talks on ending the war after the Kremlin said it didn’t want him there, a U.S. administration official and a Russian official told NBC News.
Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg was conspicuously absent from two recent summits in Saudi Arabia — one with Russian officials and the other with Ukrainians — even though the talks come under his remit.
“Together,” Trump said in announcing Kellogg’s nomination in November, “we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.”
But Kellogg did not attend U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on Feb. 18. Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he was too pro-Ukraine, a senior Russian official with direct knowledge of the Kremlin’s thinking told NBC News.
“Kellogg is a former American general, too close to Ukraine. Not our kind of person, not of the caliber we are looking for,” according to the official, who is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
A U.S. official in the Trump administration, who is also not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that Russia did not want Kellogg involved. The official did not know when that was communicated to the White House.
Where this leaves Kellogg is unclear.
Kellogg’s office did not respond to requests for comment on why he has not been involved in the negotiations and whether Russia had requested that he not attend.
National Security Council spokesman James Hewitt said Trump had “utilized the talents of multiple senior administration officials to assist in the bringing the war in Ukraine to a peaceful resolution.” He added that Kellogg remained “a valued part of the team, especially as it relates to talks with our European allies.”
Ending the war
Kellogg, 80, is a staunch Trump loyalist who served in various roles in Trump’s first term, including a stint as Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser.
Before he was confirmed as Trump’s envoy for Russia-Ukraine peace in January, he wrote about what he called the Biden administration’s “incompetent” foreign policies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Keith Kellogg in Kyiv last month.
In a paper for the America First Policy Institute, which was founded to promote Trump’s policies, he suggested that to end the war the United States should arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses, thus ensuring that “Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement.”
“Future American military aid, however, will require Ukraine to participate in peace talks with Russia,” Kellogg and his co-author, Fred Fleit, wrote.
During his presidential campaign, Trump said that it was a top priority to end the war, which started in February 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor, and that he would halt hostilities “24 hours” after taking office.
The war has raged on after Trump became president for a second time, with Russia making slow progress on the battlefield in Ukraine and pressing Ukrainian forces that had taken a sliver of Russian territory across the border in Kursk.
Ukrainian soldiers fire artillery toward Russian positions in the Donetsk region last year.
On Feb. 11, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, went to Moscow and spent 3½ hours with Putin.
There is no official account of their meeting. Witkoff had traveled to Russia to help secure the release of Marc Fogel, an American teacher held for 3½ years for a minor medical cannabis infraction.
In a CBS News interview, Witkoff, a New York real estate developer and a friend of Trump’s, called his hourslong meeting with Putin a “trust building” assignment from Trump. He said that he was the only U.S. official present at the meeting and that he carried a message for Putin from Trump. Witkoff also said Putin “had something for me to transmit back to the president” but did not say what it was.
The following day, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he had spoken with Putin and that they had “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.”
“We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations,” he added.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov later said that during the 90-minute call, Putin “expressed readiness to receive American officials in Russia regarding areas of mutual interest, including, of course, the topic of Ukrainian settlement.”
On Feb. 13, Trump announced a list of diplomats who would attend the talks with Russia. Witkoff, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and national security adviser Michael Waltz were on the team led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Kellogg was not on the list. A second U.S. official told NBC News at the time that the decision stung him.
U.S. and Russian officials meet at Riyadh’s Diriyah Palace on Feb. 18.
A representative for Witkoff would not comment when NBC News asked whether his boss discussed Kellogg’s exclusion with Putin.
Asked last week whether Russian officials had requested that Kellogg not be included in the high-level talks, Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that it was up to American leaders to “fix their delegation” and that Russia’s diplomats had “great experience of dealing with different envoys.”
Andrei Fedorov, a former deputy foreign minister who maintains close ties with the Kremlin, went further, telling NBC News that Kellogg was “not the person with whom Russia will negotiate with” because his position on the talks was to freeze the front line in Ukraine.
Russia wants Kyiv’s forces to withdraw from Ukrainian regions where there is still fighting, including the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia administrative regions, known as oblasts, Fedorov, said.
Russia illegally annexed the regions, along with Donetsk and Luhansk, in September 2022.
Trump has since played hardball with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with relations reaching a low point after their extraordinary Oval Office spat on Feb. 28. The United States subsequently paused intelligence sharing and providing security assistance to Ukraine.
National security adviser Michael Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, met with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
The pause was lifted Tuesday after a Ukrainian delegation agreed to a proposal for a 30-day interim ceasefire at a meeting in Saudi Arabia with Rubio and his team
Kellogg was not present.
On Thursday, Trump dispatched Witkoff to Russia again.
Shortly after he arrived, Putin said at a news conference that he agreed “with the proposals to stop the hostilities” but that there were issues that needed to be discussed. He added that he may need to “have a phone call with Trump.”
The document, drawn up in February, outlines the Russian plan to weaken the U.S. position on the Ukraine crisis by boosting tensions between the Trump White House and other nations as Russia moves ahead with its plans to pick apart the country.
The document, obtained by a European intelligence agency and reviewed by The Post, argues that the current Ukrainian government needs to be fully dismantled. “The current Kyiv regime cannot be changed from inside the country. Its complete dismantling is needed,” the report states.
The think tank behind the document has close connections to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), which is in charge of Russian operations in the war-torn country, and pushes extreme demands for a peace deal, stating that President Donald Trump’s plan to reach a peace agreement within 100 days is “impossible.”
The plan also rejects any notion that peacekeepers be allowed in Ukraine, as several European leaders have suggested. In addition, the document insists on recognition of Russian sovereignty over the territory it has seized in Ukraine.
The document calls for a buffer zone in northeast Ukraine on the border with the Russian regions of Bryansk and Belgorod, in addition to a demilitarized zone in southern Ukraine close to Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Vladimir Putin may not be interested in a peace deal with Ukraine any time soon, analysts say (AP)
Following talks in Saudi Arabia, Ukraine has endorsed a proposal from the U.S. for a 30-day ceasefire.
But analysts told The Post that Russia still has ways it can prolong the fighting, and that the path to a peace deal remains fraught with difficulty.
Council on Foreign Relations fellow Thomas Graham, who was senior Russia director at the National Security Council during George W. Bush’s administration, said Russia is “not interested in an early resolution of the Ukraine crisis.”
He noted: “They consistently talk about the root causes, which … are about the domestic politics in Ukraine, and even more important than that, the European security architecture, which would be the role of NATO. A simple ceasefire which doesn’t take that into account is of no interest to Russia. And Trump doesn’t appear to understand.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the newspaper that the Russian government “was not aware of such recommendations” outlined in the document.
He said they were “extremely contradictory,” and added: “We are working with more-considered options.”
The document was put together ahead of talks on February 18 between Russia and the U.S. in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
A Russian academic with connections to top Russian diplomats told The Post that the recommendations in the document are an amalgamation of the consensus in the Russian capital. He noted that it’s unclear how much the Kremlin takes into account documents prepared for it.
The document states that without official recognition of the territories seized by Russia, it’s likely that the fighting would begin again — “for example after the next change of administration in the U.S.”
This week, federal agencies face a deadline to provide Trump administration officials with plans for a reduction in force, a dramatic downsizing of the nation’s more than 2 million federal workers that will occur over the next few months. Along with layoffs, some agencies are expected to indefinitely extend their hiring freezes, eliminate currently vacant positions and consolidate offices as ways to reduce headcount.
After a buyout offer was accepted by fewer federal employees than expected, tens of thousands of probationary federal workers were laid off. Probationary workers include employees in their first year or two on the job, people who have recently moved between federal agencies and people who were recently promoted.
The firings have affected all 50 states and include employees at agencies that Americans frequently interact with, including the National Park Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, Internal Revenue Service, National Institutes of Health and many others.
The White House has not responded to repeated requests from USA TODAY for a precise number of fired employees. Here’s a timeline of how Trump’s workforce firings have taken shape, starting with Inauguration Day.
Jan. 20: Trump signs executive order changing job classifications
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures while signing a series of executive actions in the Oval Office at the White House on Inauguration Day in Washington, U.S., January 20, 2025.
Among his first actions as president, Trump signed an executive order that revives a policy from the final days of his first administration known as Schedule F. The directive creates a new employment classification for tens of thousands of nonpartisan career civil servants, effectively stripping them of job protections by reclassifying them as at-will positions, meaning they can be dismissed for nearly any reason.
A separate executive order froze hiring of federal civilian employees in the executive branch. It stated that any federal civilian position vacant when Trump took office may not be filled, and no new position may be created – with rare exceptions.
U.S. President Donald Trump walks into the East Room before signing the Laken Riley Act, the first piece of legislation passed during his second term in office, at the White House on January 29, 2025 in Washington, DC.More
In the email, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management offered all federal employees eight months of pay and benefits through September if they resigned by Feb. 6. Unions warned workers considering Trump’s offer that there is no guarantee the president can or will stick to it because Congress hasn’t approved funding for federal agencies beyond March 14.
Jan. 29: Union sues over reclassifying federal employees
Feb. 4: USAID employees placed on administrative leave
About 10,000 employees of the United States Agency for International Development ‒ two-thirds of whom work overseas across 60 countries ‒ were notified that they will be placed on administrative leave at the end of the week as part of Trump’s move to dismantle the foreign aid agency.
People protest against the administration of President Donald Trump’s decision to virtually shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on February 5, 2025.More
The email warned employees that many will be stripped of civil-service protections and suggested there may be loyalty tests for those who remain.
Feb. 6: Boston judge temporarily halts deadline to accept buyout offer
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole issued a temporary restraining order pausing the Trump administration’s deadline to accept the buyout in order to allow time for labor unions to challenge the plan’s legality. The American Federation of Government Employees and two other unions filed the lawsuit arguing that the administration lacks any statutory basis for the “unprecedented offer.”
The Trump administration’s lawyers had argued that extending the deadline on the very last day would “markedly disrupt the expectations of the federal workforce, inject tremendous uncertainty into a program that scores of federal employees have already availed themselves of, and hinder the administration’s efforts to reform the federal workforce.”
The order from OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell also asked departments and agencies to identify potential barriers to ensuring “the ability to swiftly terminate poor performing employees who cannot or will not improve.”
Feb. 7: Trump fires head of the Office of Special Counsel
Federal workers and supporters hold signs as they demonstrate against Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) outside of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) headquarters on February 07, 2025 in Washington, DC.More
An aide to Trump fired Hampton Dellinger, who leads the Office of the Special Counsel, on the night of Feb. 7 in a one-sentence email. Dellinger sued, arguing that 1978 federal law creating his position states he can only be removed from his job because of inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.
Probationary employees largely rely on the special counsel to back them when challenging a dismissal through the proper government channels, rather than suing.
Feb. 10: Trump fires leaders of Merit Systems Protection Board
Cathy Harris of the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board poses as she leaves the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in downtown Washington, D.C., U.S., March 3, 2025.
Within a matter of minutes, Trump fired the leaders of two other boards that federal workers can turn to as an avenue to contest their firing. Union challenges to the firings have been rejected because they have not first gone through these boards.
Trump fired Merit Systems Protection Board chair Cathy Harris, just before 11 p.m., leaving the board with two members – Raymond Limon, a Democrat whose term expired on March 1, and Henry Kerner, a Republican. A court temporarily reinstated Harris, whose term doesn’t expire until 2028, after she sued. The Merit Systems Protection Board is tasked with protecting federal workers against partisan politics and illegal employment practices. It cannot operate without a quorum.
Trump also fired the Federal Labor Relations Authority board chair, Susan Grundmann, three and a half minutes before he fired Cathy Harris. The authority handles certain complaints with federal workers’ labor unions.
Grundmann sued to be reinstated, but for the time being, Trump named Colleen Kiko, a Republican member, as chair, presiding over only one other member, Democrat Anne Wagner.
Also on Feb. 10, a court temporarily reinstated Dellinger, who promptly asked the Merit Systems Protection Board to pause the terminations of six probationary employees at six agencies, and reinstate them while he investigated their cases.
Feb. 11: Trump signs new EO to make major cuts to federal work force
Trump signed an executive order Feb. 11 that seeks to significantly reduce the size of the government by instructing heads of federal departments and agencies to undertake plans for “large-scale reductions in force.”
A White House summary of the order said agency heads were ordered to “coordinate and consult with DOGE to shrink the size of the federal workforce and limit hiring to essential positions.”
Under the order, federal agencies aren’t allowed to hire more than one employee for every four employees who depart. It also instructed the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to create new rules to ensure future federal hires are subject to additional conduct standards, such as U.S. citizenship and filing federal tax returns on time.
Feb. 12: Judge allows buyouts to move forward
O’Toole, the Boston-based federal judge, restored Trump’s buyout project, deciding federal employees unions that sued to stop the program lacked standing to bring their challenge and that his court does not have jurisdiction to hear their complaint.
Feb. 13: Thousands of probationary employees are fired
Thousands of recently-hired federal workers received notice that they had been fired.
Probationary workers are easier to fire because they lack the bargaining rights that career employees have to appeal their terminations. Firings were government-wide: from the Department of Education and Small Business Administration to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the agency that oversees the nation’s fleet of nuclear weapons.
Supporters of all sizes, attend a rally to support federal workers terminated recently on Friday, March 7, 2025 at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center at 5000 W. National Ave. in Milwaukee.
Feb. 20: Unions sue over firing probationary employees
A coalition of federal employee unions sued the administration, alleging that officials misused the probationary period to eliminate staff and that the Office of Personnel Management directed federal agencies to use a standardized termination notice falsely claiming performance issues in firing tens of thousands of employees.
“OPM, the federal agency charged with implementing this nation’s employment laws, in one fell swoop has perpetrated one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country, telling tens of thousands of workers that they are being fired for performance reasons, when they most certainly were not,” the unions argued in court documents.
Feb. 22: Five things or resign
Musk took to his social media site, X, to instruct federal workers to report their work accomplishments via email or resign.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” said the post. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The email that employees received did not mention termination or disciplinary action for employees failing to respond promptly, but sent shockwaves as employees got conflicting instructions from agencies about whether or not to respond.
“What did you do last week?” the emails read. “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”
Feb. 24: Office of Special Counsel says firing of probationary employees was illegal
Dellinger, who leads the Office of the Special Counsel, said firing probationary employees was illegal because it used boilerplate language blaming their performance rather than specific concerns and asked the Merit Systems Protection Board to decide whether to reinstate six employees while he investigates further.
Federal law generally requires 60 days’ notice for a reduction in force (what the federal government calls layoffs) and prohibits probationary employees from being fired for reasons unrelated to performance or conduct.
Feb. 25: Merit Systems Protection Board reinstates some probationary employees
A demonstrator wears a USAID vest during a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s adviser, billionaire Elon Musk’s campaign to push out tens of thousands of federal workers, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 25, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan HowardMore
The Merit Systems Protection Board ordered six fired federal employees to be rehired at least through April 10, while Dellinger’s office investigates.
“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that each of the six agencies engaged in a prohibited personnel practice,” stated the order. The Office of Special Counsel has said it is considering ways to seek relief for a broader group of federal employees similarly fired in recent weeks.
Feb. 26: New orders for mass layoffs targeting civil service employees
A memo sent by the offices of Personnel Management and Management and Budget also instructed federal departments to eliminate and consolidate duplicative positions, reduce their property footprints and produce reorganization plans for their agencies.
Elon Musk shows off his t-shirt reading “Tech Support” while speaking at the first cabinet meeting hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump, at the White House in Washington, DC, U.S., February 26, 2025.
Federal employees with full civil service protections are expected to be targeted. U.S. Postal Service workers, positions deemed necessary for law enforcement, national security and border and immigration obligations, as well as military personnel in the armed forces are exempted.
The memo also instructs federal departments to submit new organizational charts by April 14 as well as any proposed relocations of agency offices or headquarters from Washington to “less-costly parts of the country.”
Alsup said the mass firings were likely unlawful and ordered the Office of Personnel Management to halt the action, saying the agency acted out of bounds by telling other agencies – including the Education Department, the Small Business Administration and the Energy Department – to fire employees.
“OPM does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire or fire any employees, but its own,” Alsup said. The judge did not order the rehiring of anyone who had been terminated.
Feb. 28: A second five things email
The administration sent a second round of emails to federal workers instructing them to list what they’ve accomplished that week. The new directive came from agency leaders instead of DOGE.
A terminated federal worker leaves the offices of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington, D.C. on February 28, 2025 after being laid off following U.S. President Donald Trump’s order to cut funding to the agency.More
In response to Alsup’s ruling, the Trump administration informed federal departments that any firings of their probationary workers are up to the agencies themselves.
The revised guidance from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management states that “OPM is not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions regarding probationary employees,” adding that “agencies have ultimate decision making authority over, and responsibility for, such personnel actions.”
That same day, the Merit Systems Protection Board ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reinstate a fired worker, as well as “numerous” other probationary employees who were fired Feb. 13 and later.
The ruling at the request of the Office of Special Counsel who argued the firings violated federal laws related to probationary employees and reductions in force because they used a form letter that the Department of Agriculture also sent to nearly 6,000 other probationary employees.
March 6: Trump allowed to fire special counsel
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes speaks as New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison listen during the Community Impact Hearing on the public impact of federal firings and DOGE funding freezes by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., March 5, 2025.More
The Trump administration has said it will replace Dellinger with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. His agency is laying off workers whose main avenue to contest their firing is to turn to the Office of the Special Counsel for help.
March 12: Member back on the Federal Labor Relations Authority
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan reversed Trump’s Feb. 10 removal of Grundmann, a Democratic member from the Federal Labor Relations Authority, by issuing a permanent injunction requiring the rest of the board to treat Grundmann as if she had not been removed.
The authority hears disputes between federal agencies and their employees’ union and could play a significant role in expected legal fights over the mass layoffs.
What is ahead?
President Donald Trump, accompanied by Elon Musk, a White House senior advisor, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO, speaks next to a Tesla Model S on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday.
Among the planned reductions, reported by USA TODAY, are terminations of 76,000 workers from the Department of Veterans Affairs, 1,300 workers from the Department of Education, and more than 1,000 workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Trump has also openly discussed cuts of 65% to the Environmental Protection Agency’s workforce.
Layoffs are not immediate. Agencies must give employees 30 or 60 days notice.
USA TODAY reporters Joey Garrison, Bart Jansen, Maureen Groppe, Kayla Jimenez, Erin Mansfield and Tom Vanden Brook contributed.
The Wild Upgrade Elon Musk Demanded for His DOGE Office
Julia Ornedo – March 12, 2025
REUTERS
It seems that the Department of Government Efficiency isn’t done furnishing the federal offices they’ve turned into dorm rooms—and their boss Elon Musk himself has joined in on the fun.
Musk reportedly asked Chris Young, one of his political advisers, to procure a massive TV for his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building so he could play video games, a source familiar told Politico.
The DOGE chief earlier told friends that he had been sleeping in his DOGE office, in the same way he slept in Tesla factories for years, because he believed it motivated his employees to “give it their all.”
The Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington, U.S., August 2, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Wurm / REUTERS
A longtime GOP field organizer, Young was reportedly hired by Musk in August last year to oversee the America PAC tasked with boosting Republican voter turnout in the November polls. Young has become Musk’s right-hand man for personal and professional logistics in Washington D.C., according to Politico.
Young belongs to the exclusive club of Musk’s most trusted advisers, which is said to be composed of executives who followed the billionaire from his companies. They include former Boring Company CEO Steve Davis, his wife and former X real estate chief Nicole Hollander, and SpaceX Vice President for People Operations Brian Bjelde.
It isn’t just Musk who has turned federal buildings into a personalized office.
DOGE goons have also transformed government offices into crash pads complete with furniture, children’s play areas, and their own washer-dryer, two General Services Administration employees told Politico last week.
Photos and invoices obtained by Politico showed a child’s play area decorated with a stuffed animal and other toys, as well as a $25,000 invoice to install a washer-dryer.
DOGE lackeys have also set up IKEA beds, lamps, and dressers in at least four rooms on the sixth floor of the GSA building. The rooms can only be accessed by people with high-level security clearances, making them difficult to inspect.
“People are definitely … sleeping there,” a GSA staffer told the news outlet.
Former federal employees have speculated that the DOGE team sleeps in their offices to “terrorize the civilian workforce.”
“It’s exceedingly odd,” Jeff Nesbit, an author and former senior official, told Politico. “I’ve run the public affairs offices of five different Cabinet departments or agencies under four different presidents, two Republicans and two Democrats. I have never heard of any such thing.”
Elon Musk Reportedly Wants A Government Shutdown So He Can Get Rid Of Those Pesky Regulators More Easily
Collin Woodard – March 12, 2025
Elon Musk – Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Republicans in Washington are once again in disarray, as those who want to avert a government shutdown struggle to find enough votes to pass yet another continuing resolution. If they can’t pass something by Friday night, we’ll be forced to deal with yet another Republican government shutdown. You’d think the party that controls all three branches of government, including both the House and the Senate, would be able to do that easily, but nope. And if Republican infighting sends us into another shutdown, you’ll likely have Tesla CEO Elon Musk to thank. And he doesn’t just want a temporary shutdown, either — Musk wants a permanent one, Wired reports.
According to several sources who Wired agreed not to name, Musk wants a government shutdown because he believes that will make it easier to fire several hundred thousand more workers, especially since judges keep reminding the new administration that breaking the law is illegal. Based on what those sources told Wired, it sounds like Musk’s goal is to fire so many workers that it forces every single agency to operate like we’re in a permanent government shutdown.
That would obviously help Musk achieve his goal of crippling the government’s ability to enforce regulations, but once again, the Republican politicians who could do something to stop him would rather anonymously vent to the media. Doing stuff is hard, y’all. “You know none of this is about saving money, right?” one spineless Republican coward told Wired. “It’s all about destroying a liberal power base.”
If Musk could cause a government shutdown, though, all federal employees currently classified as nonessential would immediately be furloughed, which would mean they’d stop getting paid, but more importantly to Musk, they also wouldn’t be allowed to work until Republicans finally managed to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government until the next time Republicans shut it down. A 2023 Partnership for Public Service report estimated the number of workers classified as nonessential is somewhere in the 850,000-person range, although the economic impact of a prolonged shutdown would be even worse since essential workers don’t get paid until the government reopens, either.
But while the stock market is already tanking as a result of Republicans’ terrible policies, what they’ll do behind the scenes is arguably even more concerning. “Maybe they decide that entire government agencies don’t need to exist anymore,” Senator Mark Kelly said Monday.
Gunning For A 30-Day Shutdown
Mike Johnson – Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
If Republicans go along with Musk’s plan to shut down the government, workers are still at risk of losing the jobs they aren’t allowed to do or be paid for even before they finally pass another CR. That’s because after 30 days, a Reduction In Force kicks in automatically. Workers with the most seniority and veterans would be prioritized, but triggering the RIF would result in massive staff cuts that would, in turn, cripple all federal agencies. Sure, Republicans would be happy almost no one was left to tell them they couldn’t build giant Give All Employees Cancer machines or whatever it is that the wealthy like to spend money on, good luck getting someone to respond if you try to report the GAEC machine to the feds.
“If you can shut down the government for 30 days, it’s a method of pursuing a RIF,” Nick Bednar, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Law, told Wired. That said, an RIF during an extended government shutdown would also be new territory for the federal government even in normal circumstances, and in addition to the likely legal challenges, Bednar said the details are still unclear, adding, “How an automatic RIF applies is still up for debate because we’ve never seen it happen.”
And while Trump and his Johnson claim they don’t want to shut down the government, a February 11 executive order directed agency heads to prepare plans for “large-scale reductions in force (RIFs)” with a focus on “all components and employees performing functions not mandated by statute or other law who are not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations as provided in the Agency Contingency Plans on the Office of Management and Budget website.” If you thought that might mean fewer cops, though, they made sure to include an exception for “functions related to public safety, immigration enforcement, or law enforcement.”
Money Has Nothing To Do With It
SpaceX rocket – Brandon Bell/Getty Images
There are probably plenty of ways federal spending could be streamlined, including taking a much closer look at military spending, but don’t let anyone tell you for a single second that firing workers is about improving efficiency and saving money. Firing every single person currently classified as nonessential would only save about $110 billion in payroll expenses annually. There’s a good chance it would save money in the same way buying the cheapest used tires you can find on Craigslist saves you money, but for the sake of the argument, we’ll give them the $110 billion, which anyone who can count will correctly tell you is a truly massive amount of money. That’s also about $890 billion short of the $1 trillion Musk has claimed he wants to cut from the budget, which some quick mental math tells me is way, way more than $110 billion.
In a world where Republicans actually cared about something other than getting rid of regulations and taxes so billionaires like Elon Musk can do whatever they want, no matter how many people they hurt, they wouldn’t be starting with slashing jobs and driving up the unemployment rate because even if Musk fed the entire federal workforce into a woodchipper, it still wouldn’t get him anywhere close to that $1 trillion he talks about. Firing people before you know what they do isn’t great in the private sector, either, but Twitter crashing because you fired the person who could have prevented it isn’t remotely the same thing as a drunk pilot crashing a plane full of people because you fired the people who stop that kind of stuff.
No, you go after the federal workforce first because people doing their jobs get in the way of billionaires doing whatever they want. The more people you manage to get rid of, the easier it is to break the law without consequences.
Shutdowns Are Terrible For The Economy
Mike Johnson – Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
While a RIF triggered by a shutdown that furloughs workers for more than 30 days hasn’t happened before, we don’t have to look very far into the past to see how much a prolonged shutdown would hurt the economy. When Republicans shut the government down on December 22, 2018, they didn’t allow the government to reopen until January 25, 2019, meaning it lasted 35 days. A later report from the Congressional Budget Office estimated the shutdown reduced Q1 real GDP by $8 billion, all so Republicans could rile up their base and stick it to the libs or something.
Republicans using a government shutdown as a creative way to get around worker protections and slash jobs also open the government up to lawsuits that are far more likely to succeed, at least before the Republican-controlled Supreme Court steps in, than they were in 2013 when furloughed employees sued for back pay after, you guessed it, yet another Republican government shutdown. They may be gambling on SCOTUS letting them get away with it, but as the previous illegal attempt to cut off all funding for USAID showed, Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett can’t be counted on to go along with absolutely everything Republicans want. At the very least, give them a creative theory they can run with that isn’t just, “We won the election, so laws we don’t like no longer apply.”
Is that great news? Of course not. Everything Republicans are doing looks, by any objective standard, like their goal is to send us back to 1929. Heck, Trump’s even doing a redux of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that helped turn a stock market crash into the worst depression this country has ever seen. Hopefully, for the sake of everyone involved except the billionaires, we figure out a way to stop Republicans from succeeding because in addition to the part where we didn’t begin to crawl out of the Great Depression until several years later, it also led to another World War. Surely, unless you’re one of those freaks who believes they can trigger the end times by causing global calamity, you can agree we don’t want that even if you’ve never voted for a Democrat in your life.
