DOGE Quietly Deletes the 5 Biggest Spending Cuts It Celebrated Last Week
The cuts, highlighted on an earlier version of the “wall of receipts” posted by Elon Musk’s team, contained mistakes that vastly inflated the amount of money saved.
Jeff Stein on X: "Elon Musk's pick to run the Social Security Administration, now taking over the agency, is out with a statement today in which he acknowledges that people in the Social Security database who are over 100 years old are "not necessarily receiving benefits" Trump had said "millions https://t.co/NFya0iRi3h" / X
From Tangle newsletter on Trump's address to Congress.: > Trump is still repeating a lot of nonsense about Social Security payments to 150-year-old Americans. To recap: We know the Social Security Administration (SSA) issues erroneous payments. Last year the SSA inspector general found $71.8 billion in improper payments from 2015 to 2022 (about 0.84% of the $8.6 trillion in payments over that time). Another inspector general report from 2021 found that the SSA made $298 million in payments to 24,000 dead beneficiaries. But Musk has made much more sweeping claims on X and is pretending DOGE uncovered this. A lot of people explained to Musk that he was misunderstanding the data he was looking at, but he has not corrected the record. Now the president is running with it, even after his own appointed Social Security administrator said “recent reporting” (from Musk and Trump) was misinforming people about fraudulent payments.
Doge staffers enter Noaa headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats
Members reportedly sought access to IT systems at agency that Project 2025 has called ‘harmful to US prosperity’
Elon Musk on X: "Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for “large scale social deception”. That is literally what it says on the purchase order! They’re a total scam. Just wow." / X
We’re Now Seeing the Dire Consequences of Elon Musk’s Changes to Twitter
X is a fog-of-war machine.
Prof Paul Bernal on Twitter
Anyway, my tuppence worth on Musk and Twitter. He’s in for a rocky ride, and the question for me is whether his ego is going to make him destroy Twitter. Right now, what’s pretty clear is that he doesn’t understand what makes Twitter work. 1/10— Prof Paul Bernal (@PaulbernalUK) November 1, 2022