Donald Trump’s administration has taken a sledgehammer to the Social Security system, and it’s using the president’s election denial playbook to do so along the way.

As with his attempts to overturn his loss in 2020, Trump began his political attack on Social Security with baseless claims of widespread fraud by millions of people — even sharing similarly inaccurate stories about dead people and undocumented immigrants.

He’s now moving on to the next phase: attempting to create some kind of paper trail. As part of his election denial efforts, his lawyers assembled hundreds of affidavits from people who purportedly witnessed fraud. But those affidavits fell apart once they were presented to judges, who largely found them unsupported or simply not credible.

This time, Trump is assigning federal prosecutors to look into Social Security fraud and directing an inspector general to investigate recipients over 100 years old with mismatched records under a memorandum signed at the White House on Tuesday.

As with election denial, there’s no evidence for the widespread fraud claims pushed by Trump and his billionaire adviser, Elon Musk.

The most recent inspector general’s audit found that over a five-year period ending in May 2018, an estimated $33.5 million in benefits were redirected to a different bank account, a typical form of Social Security fraud. That’s a relatively small number in a system that pays out $1.5 trillion each year in benefits.

Trump’s claim that “millions and millions of people over 100 years old” are receiving benefits has been thoroughly debunked.

And the wild claims about immigrants undermining Social Security turn out to be the opposite of the truth, as immigrants help support Social Security because they pay into the system without qualifying for benefits. Even undocumented immigrants were estimated to have paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes in 2022, according to a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

In 2020, Trump also sought to have legitimate votes thrown out in court. This time, his administration reportedly put 6,300 names of immigrants who obtained Social Security numbers through a legal process onto the “death master file” — essentially legally declaring them dead — with the goal of making it hard for them to access banking services like credit cards and checking accounts, according to reports in The New York Times and other outlets.

On election denial, Trump’s goal was to overturn his loss. This time, his goal appears to be to make dramatic cuts to a popular benefits program that might otherwise be politically impossible.

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Ryan Teague Beckwith

Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for BLN. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline.

Donald Trump is finding fewer and fewer supplicants for his series of extortion attempts, with Harvard University becoming the latest institution to reject the administration’s demands. As with most things Harvard-related, the school’s primacy is overstated: Michigan State University, New York public schools and other education institutions have already pushed back against White House overreach. The schools are not alone: From law firms to corner offices, some of America’s most prestigious institutions are finding their spines — or at least their voices — in the face of Trump’s power grabs.

If anything, though, these institutions are trailing popular sentiment. Many observers treated Trump’s victory in November as a profound change in American politics. At the most extreme, the president and his allies tried to claim that his victory — the third-narrowest since World War II — represented a sweeping “mandate.” Even some of his critics argued his second term brought with it a “vibe shift.”

But the “vibe shift” was always a mirage. And even before Trump’s 100th day in office, the mirage is already disappearing.

Implicit in this narrative was the idea that Trump and his agenda had achieved enduring popular support. Oligarchs like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and media owners like The Los Angeles Times’ Patrick Soon-Shiong used this reasoning to shift their platforms right.

Implicit in this narrative was the idea that Trump and his agenda had achieved enduring popular support.

In fact, the president’s second-term approval ratings look eerily similar to his first: a poor start that only gets worse. Trump’s initial favorability ratings in January were the second-worst of any presidency, just slightly better than his previous administration. By mid-March, his net approval was again negative; by early April, his average disapproval was already more than 50%.

The explanation for this must start with the economy, which remains voters’ top concern. (In a recent Gallup surveyfor example, nearly 90% of Americans were concerned about the economy.) After promising to bring prices down “on day one,” the president has done little but lie about egg prices — which, yes, are still rising. Instead, Trump has blundered ahead with the most distinctive part of his economic platform: sweeping tariffs. But the more voters have seen, the less they’ve liked. Compiling more than a dozen polls taken after this month’s “Liberation Day,” former 538 editor G. Elliot Morris calculated that Trump’s approval rating dropped 6 percentage points compared to the same pollsters’ previous surveys.

A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted last week is typical of this group: 75% say the tariffs will raise prices in the short term, 65% say they’ll make the economy worse and 54% say Trump is already more responsible for the state of the economy than Joe Biden, just two months after the latter left office. Even the intended beneficiaries of tariffs — according to Trump, at least — are skeptical: In a Washington Post survey of manufacturing workers, 57% said his tariffs would “hurt your job and career,” while just 22% said the duties would help.

While voters soured quickly on Trump’s economic policies, his handling of immigration has seemed a bright spot for many. But as with the broader “vibe shift” narrative, the signs of a mirage have long been present. Even before the election, most voters opposed the specifics of Trump’s immigration policiessuch as deporting immigrants with no criminal records or those who are parents of U.S. citizens. As cases such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Mahmoud Khalil highlight MAGA’s cruel immigration policies, Trump’s strength on the issue has ebbed. In a new Quinnipiac pollfor instance, Trump’s net approval on immigration issues is minus 5%; on deportations specifically, it’s minus 10%.

When politicians and pundits try to conjure a more pro-MAGA vibe shift, they not only overstate the popularity of Trump’s agenda, but they also understate the scale and the fury of his opposition. The Democrats who were quickest to recognize political reality are being rewarded. Sen. Cory Booker seized the country’s attention with his record-breaking speechand Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have drawn record crowds on their cross-country tour, even in red states.

Little comes more naturally to Trump than bluffing about his power.

On the other side of the aisle, as I wrote last weekthe tariff fiasco has lessened the taboo for GOP lawmakers criticizing Trump. And after weeks of Trump corralling dissident Republicans in Congress with his word alone, House Speaker Mike Johnson had to put his job on the line to avoid an embarrassing defeat on an all-important budget vote.

That the Trump agenda was never as popular as recent conventional wisdom would claim does not lessen the damage done. Nor will it stop the president and his billionaire allies from plowing on with their destruction of government and civil society. Little comes more naturally to Trump than bluffing about his power.

But the truth of Trump’s unpopularity is instructive in how the rest of us respond to his destruction. Those that already caved to the administration’s demands, or who are in the midst of caving, look more foolish by the day. Those who cover his agenda — including, yes, his immigration policies — as if it is popular do a disservice to their readers. And those who encourage his opponents to hold off protesting, until Trump sinks himself, ignore that that day has already come.

James Downu

James Downie is a writer and editor for BLN Daily. He was an editor and columnist for The Washington Post and has also written for The New Republic and Foreign Policy.

President Donald Trump has a lot of problems in the bathroom, and he isn’t shy about sharing them. Faucets? “You want to wash your hands. You turn on the water and it goes drip, drip. The soap, you can’t get it off your hand.” Toilets? “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once.” Showers? “I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes till [my hair] gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous.” Trump may be the most powerful man in the world, but his every visit to the loo is apparently an exercise in disappointment and frustration.

So in between attacking America’s universities and sending people to be tortured in a Salvadoran prisonTrump has addressed this urgent bathroom crisis with bold action. He signed an executive order last week “to end the Obama-Biden war on water pressure and make America’s showers great again,” with this inspiring promise: “No longer will showerheads be weak and worthless.”In this Passover season, Americans can rejoice, because, like the Jews arriving in the Promised Land after wandering the Sinai for 40 years, we will at last be delivered from our exile in the parched low-flow desert.

Trump is right about one thing: There were laws and regulations passed under previous administrations concerning the amount of water used by showers and toilets. Where he goes wrong is his believing this has made things worse. To the contrary, these kinds of regulations have spurred private-sector innovation and left consumers, and the country, much better off.

Consider the toilet. Back in 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed a law that, in addition to mandating that most faucets flow at less than 2.2 gallons per minutemandated that toilets use just 1.6 gallons of water per flush. That was a reduction from the 3.5 gallons that most toilets used then. For a time, manufacturers simply reduced the amount of water in toilets but didn’t alter their basic design, which did indeed make them work poorly. This period three decades ago appears to be where the president’s memory is stuck.Faced with dissatisfaction from consumers, the manufacturers updated their designsand today’s toilets not only use less water (some less than 1 gallon per flush), but they also work better than the old water-hungry ones did. If you replaced an old toilet in the last few years, you were probably amazed at how much more effectively even modestly priced modern toilets work, even as they use less water.

The result of the law was better toilets, happier consumers and significantly less water used — a win for everyone. It’s exactly what government regulation of consumer products is supposed to accomplish.

By the time it took effect under President Barack Obama, Republicans were incandescent with rage.

Or think of another recent home product about which we had a political conflict: incandescent lights. Here, too, the transition away from the old design began with a president named Bush. In 2007, George W. Bush signed a law setting new standards for light bulb efficiency; by the time it took effect under President Barack Obama, Republicans were incandescent with rage over this supposed assault on our freedom. Rep. Michele Bachmann — the Marjorie Taylor Greene of her day — made preserving inefficient incandescents her personal crusade, claiming that Democrats and “globalists” were robbing us of our God-given light bulb liberty. Running for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, she vowed that “President Bachmann will allow you to buy any light bulb you want.” And what happened? We transitioned fairly quickly from incandescents to compact fluorescents (one day you’ll tell your grandkids about those funny spiral bulbs) and then to the now-ubiquitous LEDs. Prices steadily dropped, and today there are more choices on the market than anyone could need; the “LED bulbs” section of the Home Depot website lists 2,459 products.

Here, too, Trump is living in the past: In his first term he complained that LED lighting “doesn’t make you look as good,” and “being a vain person that’s very important to me.” But in fact, this was another case study in successful regulation: The government set a rule, the market responded, and now we’re all better off. We use less electricity for lighting, which saves us all money and reduces climate emissions from generating power. Today’s bulbs are affordable and perform well, and there are more to choose from than ever before.As for the showerheads that give Trump so much trouble, those, too, have come a long way; there are innumerable ones on the market that use less water but provide the strong pressure the president says he yearns for. I recently bought a $17 showerhead that could strip the paint off a car fender. The Environmental Protection Agency even has a labeling program called Watersense that can help you find efficient, high-performing models.

In his first term he complained that LED lighting “doesn’t make you look as good,” and “being a vain person that’s very important to me.”

It’s fine to be skeptical of government regulation of consumer products; there will be times when those regulations fail to achieve the goals that drove them or produce unintended consequences. But the story told by the rules for toilets, showers and light bulbs is one of successful cooperation between the government and industry that resulted in gains for both consumers and the planet. So if President Trump is still tormented by his bathroom, his exasperated cries echoing through the halls of Mar-a-Lago, perhaps he should have his staff update the fixtures. He’ll be glad he did.