Category: Veterans – Patriotism

Trump is a Putin-compromised asset

The Other 98%

Trump is a Putin-compromised asset

The Other 98% – March 4, 2025

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Elon Musk’s AI Grok thinks “there is a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties.”Grok was asked the following question and the AI’s response (below) is pretty amazing.Question to Grok: What is the likelihood from 1-100 that Trump is a Putin compromised asset. Use all publicly available information from 1980 on and his failure to ever say anything negative about Putin but has no issue attacking allies.

Grok’s Answer: Assessing the likelihood that Donald Trump is a compromised asset of Vladimir Putin, based on publicly available information from 1980 onward, involves analyzing a complex web of financial ties, personal interactions, political behavior, and circumstantial evidence. This is not a definitive determination but an estimation grounded in patterns and data accessible as of March 4, 2025. The question highlights Trump’s consistent reluctance to criticize Putin juxtaposed against his frequent attacks on U.S. allies, which is a key behavioral indicator to consider alongside historical and financial context.

From the 1980s onward, Trump’s business dealings provide a starting point. Public records show he pursued real estate ventures with significant Russian financial involvement. In 1987, Trump visited Moscow, a trip facilitated by Soviet officials, sparking speculation about early cultivation by Russian intelligence—speculation later fueled by former KGB agent Yuri Shvets, who claimed Trump was targeted as a potential asset due to his ego and financial vulnerabilities. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, as Trump faced bankruptcies, he increasingly relied on funding from sources tied to Russia and former Soviet states. His sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, made statements reinforcing this: Donald Jr. in 2008 said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” and Eric in 2014 claimed, “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” The Trump Organization’s partnerships, like with the Bayrock Group (led by Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater, the latter with known Russian mafia ties), and sales of properties to Russian oligarchs (e.g., Dmitry Rybolovlev’s 2008 purchase of a Trump property for $95 million), suggest a dependency on Russian money that could create leverage.

Intelligence reports and investigations add weight. The 2017 U.S. Intelligence Community assessment concluded Putin authorized interference in the 2016 election to favor Trump, a finding supported by the Mueller Report, which, while not proving criminal conspiracy, documented extensive Trump campaign-Russia contacts (over 100 by some counts). The unverified Steele Dossier alleges kompromat from Trump’s 2013 Moscow trip during the Miss Universe pageant, a claim echoed by speculation about earlier visits. Leaked Kremlin documents reported by The Guardian in 2021 suggest Putin personally approved a 2016 operation to back Trump, viewing him as “mentally unstable” and exploitable, with potential compromising material from past Moscow visits. The disappearance of a classified binder of Russia intelligence post-Trump term, as reported by Reuters in 2023, further stokes suspicions of hidden ties.Trump’s behavior as president and beyond is striking. He has never directly criticized Putin, even when pressed—e.g., at the 2018 Helsinki summit, he sided with Putin’s denial of election interference over U.S. intelligence. Post-presidency, Bob Woodward’s 2024 book War alleges Trump spoke to Putin up to seven times, including a secretive 2024 call at Mar-a-Lago. Contrast this with his attacks on NATO allies, calling them “delinquent” on payments, or his 2025 Oval Office clash with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, where he blamed Ukraine for Russia’s invasion—echoing Kremlin talking points. This pattern deviates from decades of U.S. policy and aligns with Russian interests, like weakening NATO and Ukraine.

Counterarguments exist: Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on Russia (e.g., over Skripal poisoning in 2018), expelled diplomats, and armed Ukraine—actions Putin wouldn’t favor. Some argue his pro-Russia stance reflects a misguided belief he can outmaneuver Putin, not compromise. Yet these measures were often driven by Congress or aides over Trump’s objections, and he downplayed their significance, maintaining personal warmth toward Putin.

Weighing this, the financial ties (decades-long, opaque, and substantial), intelligence suggesting Russian intent, and Trump’s unwavering refusal to criticize Putin despite attacking allies tilt the scale. The lack of transparency—e.g., hiding tax returns, seizing interpreter notes after Putin talks—amplifies suspicion. No smoking gun proves direct control, but the “useful idiot” scenario, where Trump’s ego and debts make him unwittingly pliable, fits the evidence. Adjusting for uncertainty and alternative explanations (e.g., ideological alignment or naivety), I estimate a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties. This range reflects the strength of circumstantial evidence tempered by the absence of conclusive proof, a gap unlikely to close without classified data.

Commentary: Trump, the GOP and DOGE have launched their attack on Social Security. You should start worrying now

Los Angeles Times

Commentary: Trump, the GOP and DOGE have launched their attack on Social Security. You should start worrying now

Michael Hiltzik – March 4, 2025

President Donald Trump listens as Elon Musk speaks in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (Photo/Alex Brandon)
Elon Musk and Donald Trump, grim reapers trying to kill Social Security. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

Perhaps the most frequently cited quote from Donald Trump relevant to his purported efforts to root out government waste has been “we’re not touching Social Security,” or variations thereof.

I expressed skepticism about this pledge shortly after the election by listing all the oblique ways the Trump administration could hack away at the program.

It gives me no pleasure to update my observation with the words, “I told you so.”

“We’re not touching Social Security.”

Donald Trump makes a false promise

Among the weapons Trump could wield, I wrote, was starving the program of administrative resources — think money and staff. Sure enough, on Friday the program, which is currently led by acting Commissioner Leland Dudek, announced plans to reduce the program’s employee base to 50,000 from 57,000.

Its press release about the reduction referred to the program’s “bloated workforce.”

To anyone who knows anything about the Social Security Administration, calling its workforce “bloated” sounds like a sick joke. The truth is that the agency is hopelessly understaffed, and has been for years.

In November, then-Commissioner Martin O’Malley told a House committee that the agency was serving a record number of beneficiaries with staffing that had reached a 50-year low.

I asked the Social Security Administration to reconcile its claim of a bloated workforce with the facts. I got no reply.

Nearly 69 million Americans were receiving benefits as of Dec. 31, according to the agency. That figure encompassed 54.3 million retired workers, their spouses and their children, nearly 6 million survivors of deceased workers and more than 8.3 million disabled workers and their dependents. Agency employment peaked in 2009 at about 67,000, when it served about 55 million people.

Read more: Column: An exhaustive debunking of the dumbest myths about Social Security

“Without adequate staff at the agency,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said at a news conference Monday, “there will be people who can’t get their benefits, period.”

Not only beneficiaries could be affected by Trump’s raid on Social Security. About 183 million people pay Social Security taxes on their earnings. Their right to collect what they’re entitled to based on their contributions is dependent on the system recording those payments and calculating their benefits accurately, to the last penny. Any incursion by DOGE into the program’s systems or the scattershot firings that Dudek forecasts puts all that at risk.

In his testimony, O’Malley talked about how the agency had struggled to establish an acceptable level of customer service. In 2023, he said, wait times on the program’s 800 number had ballooned to nearly an hour. Of the average 7 million clients who called the number each month for advice or assistance, 4 million “hung up in frustration after waiting far too long.” The agency had worked the wait down to an average of less than 13 minutes, in part by encouraging customers to wait off the line for a call back.

Disability applicants faced the worst frustrations, O’Malley said. The backlog of disability determinations, which often require multiple rounds of inquiries, hearings and appeals, had reached a near-record 1.2 million. The program estimated that about 30,000 applicants had died in 2023 while awaiting decisions.

O’Malley had asked for a budget increase in fiscal 2025 to add at least 3,000 workers to the customer-service ranks, but it wasn’t approved.

Make no mistake: The starving of Social Security’s administrative resources, which is currently taking place under the guise of ferreting out fraud and waste, is no accident. It’s part of a decades-long Republican project aimed at undermining public confidence in the program.

Back in 1983, for example, the libertarian Cato Institute published an article by Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis calling for a “Leninist” strategy to “prepare the political ground” for privatizing Social Security on behalf of “the banks, insurance companies, and other institutions that will gain from providing such plans to the public.” Political opposition, as it happens, resulted in the death of George W. Bush’s push to privatize Social Security in 2005.

Read more: Column: Trump pledges not to cut Social Security. Here are the ways he could breach that promise

Germanis has since become a fierce critic of conservative economics and politics. Butler, who had spent 35 years at the right-wing Heritage Foundation before joining the Brookings Institution in 2014, told me by email he now advocates a private retirement system as an “add-on” private option rather than an alternative to Social Security. He also said he thinks “cutting staff and the claim that Social Security is rife with fraud and abuse are both ridiculous.”

The Trump acolytes have already taken an ax to some Social Security operations, as announced by Dudek — a former mid-level agency worker who stepped into the vacuum created by the departure of several managers who had dustups with Elon Musk’s DOGE outfit and by a delay in Senate confirmation of Commissioner-designate Frank Bisagnano, a banking and Wall Street veteran.

Last week, Dudek closed the agency’s office of transformation, which he called “wasteful” and “redundant.” The office was engaged in helping to keep the agency’s website operational and to develop usable online resources for beneficiaries and applicants. He closed its office of civil rights and equal opportunity, certainly functions relevant to the program’s operations. Employees in both offices were laid off or fired, and their pages on the website were removed.

On Monday, Dudek bragged about having “identified” some $800 million in cost savings, including through the cancellation of contracts that, for all he knows, may be crucial to the agency’s functioning. The largest “savings” came from a freeze on hiring and overtime in disability determination services, worth $550 million, according to Dudek.

But that’s an area where hands-on contact between applicants and the agency is indispensable. Academic researchers reported in 2019 that the closing of field offices dealing with disability applications led to “a persistent 16% decline in the number of disability recipients in surrounding areas, with the largest effects for applicants with moderately severe conditions and low education levels.”

Read more: Column: Social Security is again in the crosshairs of a GOP budget, even though a long-term fix would be simple

In an appearance Friday on Joe Rogan’s webcast, Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” a repetition of an ancient meme that demonstrates only that he knows nothing about Social Security, and nothing about Ponzi schemes. The program boasts an 85-year unbroken record for paying beneficiaries what they’re owed, and currently holds a reserve of nearly $2.8 trillion in Treasury securities, all publicly disclosed.

The GOP brain trust has accepted the claim that Social Security is rife with fraud without devoting a moment’s thought to it. House Speaker Mike Johnson absurdly claimed Sunday on “Meet the Press” that Musk’s “algorithms crawling through the data” are “finding enormous amounts of waste, fraud and abuse.”

There’s absolutely zero evidence for that. Can we trust Musk to find it? This is the guy whose claim that “millions” of people aged 150 or older were receiving payments was decisively debunked — the notion that benefits were going to people that old was merely an artifact of the software program used by the agency. No payments are going to anyone in that category; Social Security automatically ceases payments to anyone who has reached the age of 115. The chief bug in the system is Musk’s ignorance.

By the way, the search for waste, fraud and abuse — call it WFA — has a long and discreditable history. Ronald Reagan pledged to ferret out enough WFA to cut the federal budget by more than 6% (sometimes he said 10%). One of his first steps, however, was to fire 15 departmental inspectors general, whose jobs involved finding WFA. Sound familiar? One of Trump’s first orders upon taking office was to fire inspectors-general at 17 federal agencies.

Reagan impaneled the so-called Grace Commission, whose chairman, industrialist J. Peter Grace, promised to unearth billions of dollars of the elusive WFA. The commission’s eventual proposals included taxing Social Security benefits, adding soy meat-extender to school lunches ($84-million savings over three years), and eliminating the regulatory agencies that oversaw industries represented by the panel’s members.

The truth is that Social Security is one of the most efficient agencies in the federal government. Its administrative costs are one-half of one-percent of its total costs, which include benefit payments.

What’s the goal of this raid on Social Security, the nation’s premier anti-poverty program and one whose beneficiaries live by the tens of thousands in every congressional district in the land?

It’s as if Trump and Musk are intent on staging a natural experiment on whether Republicans can tick off or terrify 69 million Americans at one fell swoop by taking away their sustenance in old age or disability — and still win election.

They’re bound to learn, to the contrary, that there isn’t a federal program that Americans value more than Social Security. Are they dumb enough to try killing it? We shall see.

Get the latest from Michael Hiltzik
Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner.

The United States isn’t being run, its being raided!

Bakar Jabbie – March 5, 2025

Bakar Jabbie: The United States isn’t being run, its being raided!, Every system, every safeguard, every last bit of stability is being gutted, sold off, and handed to the highest bidder. This isn’t incompetence. This is a controlled demolition. The billionaires are making their final sweep, snatching up whatever’s left before the whole thing collapses under the weight of corruption. And leading the charge? Trump and Musk, the grifter-in-chief and the oligarch who already acts like he owns the place.Trump’s latest economic disaster? Slapping tariffs on Canada like a wrecking ball, thinking he can bully a major energy supplier without consequences. Well, guess what? Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford isn’t playing along. He’s ready to shut down energy exports, which means the U.S. could be looking at skyrocketing fuel prices and power shortages! All because Trump needed another headline. This isn’t tough leadership. It’s reckless destruction disguised as strength. Meanwhile, inflation keeps climbing, wages stay flat, and the working class gets squeezed even harder.But the real prize for these crooks isn’t trade wars, it’s Social Security!. That’s the jackpot they’ve been eyeing for decades. Musk, always eager to spread billionaire propaganda, jumps on Joe Rogan’s podcast and starts spitting nonsense about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme. He throws in a lie about dead people collecting checks, and suddenly the right-wing echo chamber lights up with demands to gut the program. The strategy is simple: create fake outrage, manufacture a crisis, then loot the system under the guise of saving it.And here’s the kicker! Social Security isn’t even in crisis. The real crisis is billionaires paying next to nothing in taxes while pretending the country “can’t afford” to take care of its seniors. If they really think the program is unsustainable, then fine! Cut a check for every dime working Americans have paid into it, adjusted for inflation and interest. But of course, that’s not the plan. The plan is to steal from the people who worked for it while billionaires keep raking in government subsidies, tax loopholes, and corporate welfare.Musk isn’t just talking! He’s running a black-market economy in plain sight. Crypto scams, government contracts funneled into his empire, artificial intelligence projects with zero oversight! It’s a money-laundering operation at global scale, and the government isn’t just allowing it. They’re funding it. While he plays puppet master with politicians, Trump is busy turning the U.S. into a failed state where the rich run wild, the courts bow to power, and everyone else fights over scraps.And speaking of selling out, Trump’s approach to Ukraine isn’t even about national security anymore! It’s a business deal. No gratitude? No resources. No help. It’s not about stopping Putin, defending democracy, or protecting NATO. It’s about who controls the lithium supply Ukraine sits on. And wouldn’t you know it? Tesla just so happens to need lithium for its empire. Funny how that works.Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to hold the line, but they’re up against a billionaire funded propaganda machine that turns truth upside down. AOC calls Musk a leech on the public. Bernie Sanders is pushing a bill to expand Social Security instead of gutting it. Patty Murray is sounding the alarm. But here’s the reality! Unless people get loud, unless they make it impossible to ignore, the looting will continue until there’s nothing left to take.This isn’t politics. It’s a corporate heist at national scale!. The government isn’t failing, it’s being dismantled on purpose. The only real question left is, how much more are people willing to watch get stolen before they finally decide enough is enough?#TruthOverNoise#ResistTheLies

Now Elon Musk Says He Wants to DOGE the U.S. Postal Service

Daily Beast

Now Elon Musk Says He Wants to DOGE the U.S. Postal Service

Liam Archacki – March 5, 2025

Elon Musk's new task
Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/USPS

Elon Musk’s newest targets in his quest to slash the federal government: the United States Postal Service and the national passenger railroad company Amtrak.

The DOGE chief said Wednesday at a Morgan Stanley tech conference, “Logically, we should prioritize anything that can reasonably be privatized… We should privatize the post office and Amtrak,” according to CNN.

“To understand the federal government, it is like a corporate takeover at scale,” Musk also said, “but one where the company is actually in much worse shape than any commercial company could ever be.”

While Musk has spent the weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration leveling accusations of fraud at the federal government and cutting programs he disagrees with, this seems to be the first time that he has publicly advocated for the privatization of these two high-profile government organizations.

Elon Musk delivers remarks during a Cabinet meeting held by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. / Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
Elon Musk delivers remarks during a Cabinet meeting held by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. / Andrew Harnik / Getty Images

Privatizing the USPS—which in recent years has faced dramatic financial difficulties, losing billions each year—has long been floated as an idea to make the service more effective.

Trump has been mulling the option since before he entered office, according to The Washington Post.

“There is a lot of talk about the Postal Service being taken private,” he said in December. “It’s a lot different today, between Amazon and UPS and FedEx and all the things that you didn’t have. But there is talk about that. It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time.”

Last month, the Post reported that Trump was considering attempting to seize control of the USPS by way of an executive order, which could violate federal law. He hasn’t done so yet.

However, privatizing the postal service could have serious downsides, especially for rural communities and small businesses. The agency’s “universal service obligation” means that it will deliver to distant parts of the country regardless of whether doing so is profitable.

An Amtrak passenger train pass by Waldo Stadium before the college football game between the Kent State Golden Flashes and Western Michigan Broncos on October 26, 2024, at Waldo Stadium in Kalamazoo, MI. / Icon Sportswire / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
An Amtrak passenger train pass by Waldo Stadium before the college football game between the Kent State Golden Flashes and Western Michigan Broncos on October 26, 2024, at Waldo Stadium in Kalamazoo, MI. / Icon Sportswire / Icon Sportswire via Getty ImagesMore

Likewise, proposals to privatize Amtrak have also come up in the past amid the organization’s financial difficulties. While the railroad service is majority-owned by the government and relies on federal subsidies, it is already run as a for-profit company.

While supporters argue that taking the passenger railroad private would make it operate more efficiently, critics of the idea point to the many problems that emerged when Britain privatized its passenger rail service in the 1990s. It resulted in greater service lapses and further financial issues, yet still required significant government subsidies.

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Elon Musk Reveals Next Targets in “Corporate Takeover” of the U.S.

The New Republic – Opinion

Elon Musk Reveals Next Targets in “Corporate Takeover” of the U.S.

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – March 5, 2025

Elon Musk told some of his biggest investors Wednesday that he’s looking to fully take over the federal government.

In a meeting with Morgan Stanley, the tech billionaire reportedly likened his influence over the federal government to a “corporate takeover.”

“To understand the federal government, it is like a corporate takeover at scale, but one where the company is actually in much worse shape than any commercial company could ever be,” Musk said at the conference, reported CNN’s Hadas Gold.

Musk then went on to say that “logically we should prioritize anything that can reasonably be privatized,” including public services such as the postal service and Amtrak.

Last month, officials with the United States Postal Service flagged that the Trump administration was looking to dissolve the organization’s governing board and place it under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick. Experts believe doing so would likely violate federal law.

The USPS is practically as old as the country, and oversees the myriad shipping demands of the American public, supporting trillions of dollars in commerce.

It also “generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations,” according to USPS’s website.

Still, that hasn’t prevented America’s public mail system from becoming a favorite target of the president. In 2020, Trump argued that the postal service should be dismantled to prevent voting by mail.

Meanwhile, Musk’s role in hacking and slashing federal spending has come under increased legal scrutiny, forcing the Trump administration to announce last week that it was Amy Gleason, a low-profile, first-term Trump official with experience in health care tech, rather than the high-profile billionaire who was leading the Department of Government Efficiency. Meanwhile, Musk has been officially titled a “senior adviser” to Trump.

That title offers him “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” the administration claimed, and leaves Musk with no formal responsibilities to run DOGE as either an employee or an administrator, but as a mere employee of the White House.

However, a Freudian slip by the president during his joint session address Tuesday confirmed what DOGE employees and Justice Department attorneys had seemed to understand: that DOGE is actually “headed up by Elon Musk.”

In early February, Morgan Stanley positioned itself to offload upward of $5.5 billion of its outstanding debt in X. Musk had tapped the bank to help him acquire the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022, but the investment has since lost the bulk of its value. In 2023, Musk admitted that the site had lost 90 percent of its value under his stewardship.

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‘Major errors’: Investigative reporter rips apart Elon Musk’s spin on DOGE

Raw Story

‘Major errors’: Investigative reporter rips apart Elon Musk’s spin on DOGE

Matthew Chapman – March 3, 2025

'Major errors': Investigative reporter rips apart Elon Musk's spin on DOGE

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk arrives to the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. Chip Somodevilla/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force quietly tried to delete its so-called “wall of receipts” after reporters identified major mistakes and falsehoods in their claimed monetary savings to the government from canceling various federal contracts.

But in doing so, they actually “added new errors” in the process, according to a new video report published by The New York Times on Monday.

“Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting effort has published what it calls the “wall of receipts,” basically a long list of government contracts, and then the savings it’s achieved by canceling each of those,” said investigative reporter David Fahrenthold. “When DOGE first posted its list, we found problems with all five of the five largest contracts” — the biggest being a supposed $8 billion savings from a Homeland Security contract on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that was actually just $8 million, and the next three being a triple count of a single contract on foreign aid, most of which had been spent already.

The problem, Fahrenthold continued, is that even as DOGE scrambled to correct its errors and eliminate those five erroneous claimed savings it continued to introduce new ones.

ALSO READ: ‘Money is being pilfered’: Democrats worry Trump and Musk will ‘steal’ from new budget

“The new largest savings was a $1.9 billion savings,” said Fahrenthold, specifically for a contract with the Treasury Department. “But when we looked into that, we realized the contract they were talking about had actually been canceled last year under President Biden. And when you look further down the list, you see that DOGE is claiming credit for contracts that expired even before Joe Biden was president. In one case, the Department of Homeland Security is claiming it saved tens of millions of dollars by canceling a contract that actually ended in 2005, when George W. Bush was president.”

DOGE acknowledges it has some inaccuracies and invites public fact-checking of its published work, Fahrenthold noted — however, “these errors are important because they give us an insight into the way DOGE works.”

“Much of what DOGE is doing is secret,” he continued. “It’s in all these different agencies, making decisions, gathering data, and we can see so little of it. And if they are this wrong about the work that we can see, if they showed this much sloppiness, this much misunderstanding of the machinery of government, what does that mean about the work we can’t see in all these other agencies with all this other data that’s being done in secret?”

Watch the NYT video at the link here.

How is Donald Trump doing? See recent polls

Lohud – The Journal News

How is Donald Trump doing? See recent polls

Victoria E. Freile, Kinsey Crowley and Samantha Neely, New York Connect Team – March 3, 2025

Polls are coming in just over a month after President Donald Trump was sworn into office, providing insight into Americans’ opinions on his administration so far. These presidential approval rating polls come as his administration launches a series of executive actions, faces court challenges, and issues DOGE directives. Thousands of federal employees have been laid off as the administration works to reshape federal agencies and cut government spending.

Have these actions affected his ratings? Here’s what to know about President Trump’s approval rating and how they are calculated.

What is Donald Trump’s approval rating? What recent polls say
Washington Post/Ipsos:
  • More respondents disapproved of Trump’s job performance by 8 percentage points. (Poll conducted Feb. 13-18; 2,601 adults; margin of error ±2.1 percentage points)
  • A majority (57%) believe Trump has exceeded his authority since taking office, according to the Post.
YouGov/The Economist:
  • More respondents approved of Trump’s job than disapproved by 3 percentage points. (Poll conducted Feb. 16-18; 1,451 registered voters; margin of error ±3.2 percentage points)
  • Roughly half of Americans (51%) believe the U.S. is facing a constitutional crisis.
Morning Consult:
  • More respondents approved of Trump’s work by 3 percentage points. (Poll conducted Feb. 14-16; 2,217 registered voters; margin of error ±2 percentage points)
  • After three weeks of declines, these ratings stabilized and are similar to numbers from the same point in his first term, according to Morning Consult.
Gallup:
  • More respondents disapproved of Trump’s job performance by a 6-point margin. (Poll conducted Feb. 3-16; 1,004 adult respondents; margin of error ±4 percentage points)
  • His support remains highly partisan, with an 89-point gap between Democrats and Republicans—the largest Gallup has recorded for any president.
Echelon Insights:
  • More Americans approved of Trump’s job performance, 52% to 46%. (Poll conducted Feb. 10-13; 1,010 likely voters; margin of error ±3.6 percentage points)
  • The survey also found that voters disapproved of Elon Musk’s federal government role by an 11-point margin.
What goes into a president’s approval rating?

A president’s approval rating reflects the percentage of Americans who approve of their job performance. Factors influencing approval include legislation, executive actions, and elections. According to ABC News, approval ratings not only gauge public sentiment but can also impact election outcomes and a president’s ability to push policies through Congress.

Are presidential approval ratings accurate?

While approval ratings are easy to understand, some analysts believe they are less useful due to extreme partisanship and a highly polarized political climate.

“Presidential approval ratings have always been partisan, with members of the president’s party offering more positive assessments than those in the opposing party,” according to the Pew Research Center. “But the differences between Republicans and Democrats on views of the president have grown substantially in recent decades.”

How does Trump’s second-term approval compare to his first?

Trump ended his first term in 2021 with a final approval rating of 34%, the same as former Presidents George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. His first-term average approval rating was 41%, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.

Despite Trump serving two non-consecutive terms, Costas Panagopoulos, head of political science at Northeastern University, told USA TODAY that comparisons between his early second-term approval and past newly inaugurated presidents remain valid.

“It seems like Americans are giving Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt as he starts his second term,” Panagopoulos said, noting that many don’t expect significant changes within his first month back in office.

What were the final approval ratings of the last 10 U.S. presidents?
  • Joe Biden – 40%
  • Donald Trump (first term) – 34%
  • Barack Obama – 59%
  • George W. Bush – 34%
  • Bill Clinton – 66%
  • George H.W. Bush – 56%
  • Ronald Reagan – 63%
  • Jimmy Carter – 34%
  • Gerald Ford – 53%
  • Richard Nixon – 24%
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House budget calls for $2T in cuts. Could Bucks County SNAP, other programs see impacts?

Bucks County Courier Times

House budget calls for $2T in cuts. Could Bucks County SNAP, other programs see impacts?

Chris Ullery and Riley Beggin – March 3, 2025

The Republican-led House passed a federal budget resolution Tuesday night as the GOP seeks to pass one “big, beautiful bill” rolling President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda into the spending plan.

The proposal passed by a near party-line vote of 217-215 sets up a reconciliation bill that includes extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts while implementing new ones at a cost of $4.5 trillion, but also requires lawmakers to find $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.

House Democrats, like Pennsylvania’s 4th District Rep. Madeleine Dean, of Lower Merion, have called the tax cuts a “betrayal of the middle class” and will be offset by programs that millions rely on, including Medicaid and SNAP, the food assistance program formerly known as food stamps.

U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks with press while walking into the House Chambers to vote on February 25, 2025 in Washington, DC.
U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks with press while walking into the House Chambers to vote on February 25, 2025 in Washington, DC.

“In Pennsylvania, nearly three million people rely on Medicaid’s Medical Assistance and CHIP for healthcare — including 39% of all the Commonwealth’s children, 47% of adults with disabilities, and 64% of people living in nursing homes,” Dean wrote in a Facebook post explaining her vote against the resolution Tuesday.

Republican leadership have pushed back on that notion, saying that enough savings can be found through implementing work requirements and rooting out waste.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that Republicans are “committed to preserving Medicare benefits for those who desperately need it, deserve it, and quality for it. What we’re talking about is rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse.”

Locally, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-1, of Middletown, seemed to echo Johnson’s comments in a statement on his website saying the “procedural” vote is one of many steps in developing the budget.

“The word Medicaid is not mentioned or addressed anywhere in this procedural bill. We will continue to keep a close eye on these deliberations as they continue, to ensure that the interests of our PA-1 community are protected,” Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick’s office did not return request for comment on if he would oppose a bill that cut Medicaid or how much of the $2 trillion in spending cuts could be covered by alleged “fraud, waste and abuse” cited by Johnson.

Does the resolution cut Medicaid and SNAP?

While the resolution doesn’t specifically mention Medicaid, SNAP or student loan assistance programs, groups like the nonprofit Tax Foundation say those programs are likely to face some reductions in the face of massive spending cuts.

The proposed spending plan directs multiple committees to cut billions of dollars, including an $880 billion reduction from the Energy and Commerce Committee — which has broad jurisdiction over numerous programs including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Trump has already ruled out signing off on cuts to Medicare and Social Security, which makes Medicaid likely to see cuts, according to a report from the foundation.

The Education and Workforce Committee, which has jurisdiction over education programs, school lunch programs and work requirements for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, would be directed to cut $330 billion. The Agriculture Committee, which has oversight over farm programs and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, would be required to cut $230 billion from programs under its jurisdiction.

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The cuts were added to the resolution as a last-minute effort to bring members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus on board with a plan that raised the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, increased defense and border security spending by $300 billion and would add almost $3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.

Republicans hold a narrow 218-215 majority in the House, which meant that the GOP could lose support from just one of its members for the vote to pass.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. was the lone GOP no vote.

SNAP and Medicaid recipients in Pennsylvania

If Republicans can’t find all of their spending cuts in alleged wasteful spending, changes to SNAP and Medicaid could affect millions of Pennsylvanians, according to data from the state’s Department of Human Resources.

The number of SNAP recipients in Pennsylvania has held steady at about 2 million people each month since October 2023 and as of last month’s reported totals. About 1.97 million people used SNAP in January 2023.

Over that same period, the total benefits sent out to people in eligible low-income households have decreased by about $5.3 million, from $367 million to $362 million in January.

In Bucks County, an estimated 48,710 individuals received more than $8.7 million in SNAP assistance in January, an increase of about 2,000 people and $244,000 compared to October 2023.

Medicaid data from the human services department, which includes TANF, General Assistance and aid for people with disabilities, only provides a breakdown of total recipients and how many were under 21.

About 3 million Pennsylvanians received some form of assistance in the Medicaid data in January, down from about 3.6 million people two years ago.

While the total amount of people have dropped, the percentage of underage recipients has increased statewide, from almost 40% in 2023 to 42% last month.

Philadelphia, the state’s most populous city, has more people using Medicaid than any other county, but only 39% of the 673,869 people enrolled are under 21.

Bucks County has followed the same trend as the state since 2023. About 42% of the 112,121 recipients reported in January 2023 were under 21 compared to 44% of 90,778 recipients last month.

In January, Bucks County ranked 10th for most residents receiving Medicaid and the 13th highest percentage of recipients under 21.

About 46% of the 120,926 people receiving Medicaid in Montgomery County were under 21, the third highest county in the state for percent of under 21 recipients and the fourth highest for total recipients.

Almost half of the 59,712 people enrolled in Medicaid in Chester County are under 21, the highest percentage in the state and 14th highest for total enrolled.

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GOP Budget Cuts Stand to Deal Tremendous Damage to Rural Economies

The New Republic

GOP Budget Cuts Stand to Deal Tremendous Damage to Rural Economies

Grace Segers – March 3, 2025

As congressional Republicans mull ways to slash federal spending while offsetting trillions of dollars in tax breaks, key social safety net programs may be on the chopping block. A massive budget proposal approved in the House last week directs the committees that oversee health care spending to cut $880 billion over the next decade, and the Agriculture Committee to cut $230 billion—a blueprint that Democrats warn will kneecap programs relied upon by low-income Americans, namely Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, also known as food stamps.

Nearly 43 million people receive such program benefits annually. Around 80 percent of SNAP households include a child, an elderly adult, or an adult with a disability. Because of its widespread use, any potential future cuts to SNAP would affect constituents of every ideological leaning, including rural Americans who live in Republican areas.

“SNAP is important everywhere. In every state, in every congressional district, it’s really important for our nation,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, an economist at Northwestern University who studies policies aimed at alleviating childhood poverty.

Strictly by the numbers, there are more SNAP recipients in metropolitan areas than rural ones; however, rural Americans experience disproportionately high rates of food insecurity and nonmetro areas have higher participation rates in SNAP. A 2022 report by Schanzenbach found that SNAP helped lessen rural childhood poverty, reducing the poverty rate by 2.6 percentage points for children in 2020, a greater impact than for children living in SNAP households in metro areas.

Conducting additional research for this story, and using data from states that provide county-level information, Schanzenbach reported that—by the 2023 definitions of “metro” and “nonmetro” counties—SNAP participation rates were consistently slightly higher in nonmetro counties than in metro ones from 2019 through 2023. In January 2023, for example, the SNAP participation rate in nonmetro counties hovered above 15 percent, compared to roughly 12 percent in metro counties.

Salaam Bhatti, the SNAP director at the Food Research and Action Center, noted that “accessibility and affordability” are two of the greatest challenges facing rural Americans. “Grocery stores and convenience stores are few and far between” in rural areas, said Bhatti, “and that’s if you even have transportation.” Public transportation is either unreliable or nonexistent in many parts of the country. Once a SNAP recipient makes it to the grocery store, their tight budget—program benefits amount to roughly $6.20 per day—makes it difficult to buy the most expensive items at the supermarket, such as fresh produce and meat.

“If any part of that benefit is decreased, then that has a ripple effect across the entire supply chain,” said Bhatti.

Representative Glenn “GT” Thompson, the chair of the House Agriculture Committee, has insisted that he does not want to make cuts to SNAP. This message was repeated by a committee staffer, who said that “neither the chairman nor our conference are interested in cutting SNAP benefits.” According to the Republican committee staffer, Thompson’s priorities for SNAP include cutting down on fraud, tightening work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, and reevaluating the Thrifty Food Plan, the method by which SNAP benefits are calculated, which was revised by the Biden administration in 2021.

However, analysis by the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, or CBPP, predicts that changes to the Thrifty Food Plan would amount to future cuts to SNAP benefits for recipients. This same report found that efforts to limit states’ abilities to request waivers for the three-month time limit for able-bodied adults without dependents to seek employment could cut hundreds of thousands of people from the SNAP rolls.

Another recent policy brief by CBPP argued that “rural unemployment is often higher, work can be more variable, and work opportunities are often farther away and harder to reach,” which could make it more difficult to meet those work requirements. (House Republicans note that work requirements can be met through volunteering and job training, in addition to direct employment.)

Tightening requirements would not necessarily decrease the number of hungry people in the country—just the number that actually received benefits. “The way to really reduce spending is to reduce the number of people in the program,” said Jonathan Coppess, director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “That doesn’t mean that people aren’t hungry. It doesn’t mean they’re still not trying to put food on the table and struggling to make ends meet. They just can’t get into the program, or they give up because it’s too onerous.”

Then there is the potential impact that cuts to SNAP could have on the local economy. For example, in West Virginia—where a large percentage of the population lives in a rural area—one in five rural households received SNAP benefits, according to a fact sheet by the Food Research and Action Center. The report also found that SNAP supported more than 2,000 retailers in West Virginia, including grocery stores and farmers markets. In Texas, the state with the largest rural population by numbers, one in eight rural households rely on SNAP.

Haley Kottler, who serves as a voter engagement director at the anti-hunger organization Kansas Appleseed, recalled speaking with a grocer in a rural part of Kansas. “I spent around 45 minutes talking to a grocer about how important SNAP is to her community,” said Kottler, adding that “it really highlighted for me how important SNAP is both to folks who need access” and to the producers providing them with food—and benefiting from their business. Kansas is in some ways unique because of limits the state legislature imposed a decade ago restricting access to SNAP; Kottler noted that cuts on the federal level would compound the squeeze felt on the state level.

“The need has always been there, and the need continues to rise,” Kottler said.

Rural communities would also be hit particularly hard by cuts to SNAP because of potential impact on farm producers. Coppess identified three nodes of connection between farmers and SNAP recipients: the political intersection, as major agriculture programs and nutrition benefits are both governed by the massive legislation known as the farm bill; the symbiotic relationship between food consumers and producers, as giving low-income Americans the means to purchase vegetables or meat indirectly helps farmers; and the impact that SNAP recipients and farmers alike have on their local communities.

One report found that, during the recovery period from the Great Recession, SNAP expenditures had a greater impact on rural economies than urban ones, increasing rural output and employment by more than 1 percent between 2009 and 2014.

“Cutting $230 billion from SNAP hurts the farmers who grow our food, the truckers who haul it, the manufacturers that produce its packaging and the grocery stores that sell it,” Representative Angie Craig, the Democratic ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement. “These cuts endanger hundreds of thousands of jobs along a food supply chain that starts in rural America and ends at dinner tables in every community across the country.”

Republicans note that the $230 billion set out in the budget resolution is still a guideline, rather than a directive: Republicans in both the House and the Senate still need to agree on a budget resolution that satisfies both chambers as well as President Donald Trump, and the final numbers of that measure are still to be determined. Senate Republicans passed their own “skinny” budget resolution last week and have expressed serious doubts about the blueprint approved by their colleagues in the House, although the source of those complaints does not necessarily appear to be related to potential cuts to nutrition programs.

Regardless, experts warn that it would be impossible to reduce the cost of SNAP without affecting benefits. “We are going to quickly see that this just can’t all come from waste, fraud, and abuse,” Schanzenbach said. “And so we’re going to cut into muscle, not just fat.”

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