Social Security Trust Fund Runs Empty IN JUST SIX YEARS

Many posts have discussed Social Security and Medicare.

Mark J. Warshawsky at AEI:

Despite repeated warnings over the last three decades from the Trustees, the Congressional Budget Office, and others of the projected exhaustion of the Social Security Retirement Trust Fund in the mid-2030s, and the need to change the retirement program to make it sustainable, Congress and most Presidential administrations of both political parties have ignored the problem. Similarly, attempts to simplify and modernize the vocational standards for disability benefits have gone nowhere for two decades owing to opposition. Worse still, advocates, analysts and politicians have demagogued these issues, preventing reasonable discussions and compromise. This is despite the fast approach of the exhaustion date of the retirement fund and the context of increasing budget deficits, growing debt, and long-term interest rates higher than economic growth rates. It is becoming clear that this deep-seated reluctance to deal with difficult issues will postpone any action until right up to and perhaps even after the time of fund exhaustion, like recently experienced federal government shutdowns.

   Warshawsky notes some analysts have proposed fixes but adds:

Other analysts, perhaps more jaded, have claimed that even these second-best and third best actions will not be needed, because Congress will simply decide to maintain current benefit levels and continue to increase federal borrowing and fill in the growing Social Security funding gap with general revenues when exhaustion occurs.  Indeed, it has been implicitly doing this since the cash flow to the Trust Fund turned negative in 2010.  The counterargument to this view is that the resource needs for full Social Security benefits will continue to grow, and at the same time the Social Security fund is exhausted, so too will be the Medicare fund, and the costs for Medicaid, veterans, insurance exchange subsidies, and other health programs from rising health care costs and the demographic pressures of an aging population will explode the budget.  Other budget pressures come from national security needs in a competitive, even hostile, global scene, along with rising interest rates and inflation.  Moreover, there may be political resistance in some quarters of both parties to explicitly turn Social Security into a welfare program, dependent on general revenues and the annual budget process, away from its self-contained and stable revenue sources and long-term promised benefits.  These pressures and considerations can be expected to f inally warrant some policy seriousness, albeit with much angst. 

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The World Boos the US Government

Many.posts have dealt with international views of the United States.  They have taken a negative turn.

Jon Henley at The Guardian:

Western Europeans prize Europe’s autonomy and values over transatlantic ties and will not give them up to placate Donald Trump, according to a poll suggesting opinions of the US have plunged to their lowest since YouGov began tracking them a decade ago.

The US president’s attempted Greenland grab has succeeded in turning Europeans solidly against his country, the pollster’s latest survey found. Large majorities in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Great Britain all declared an unfavourable opinion.

The figures, ranging from 62% in France to 84% in Denmark – of which Greenland is a self-governing territory – mark a further steep rise in negative perceptions of the US even since November, when the range was between 49% and 70%.

 

DANIELLA MATAR and COLLEEN BARRY AT AP

American athletes received an enthusiastic welcome at the opening ceremony for the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, but the mood shifted when cameras briefly turned to Vice President JD Vance.

Led by speedskater and flag bearer Erin Jackson, Team USA was among the last delegations to enter Milan’s San Siro stadium in the parade of nations on Friday.

The crowd cheered for the Americans but jeers and whistles could be heard as Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, were shown on the stadium screens, waving American flags from the tribune.

Support for the U.S. among its allies has been eroding as the Trump administration has taken an aggressive posture on foreign policy, including punishing tariffs, military action in Venezuela and threats to invade Greenland.

Giving and Volunteering

Many posts have discussed volunteering and civic virtue.

 Megan Brenan at Gallup:

Majorities of Americans continue to support charitable causes, with 76% reporting that they gave money to a religious or other nonprofit organization in the past year and 63% saying they volunteered their time to such an organization.

Americans’ current levels of charitable activities are somewhat different from what they were in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Financial contributions have eased slightly, registering five percentage points lower than in 2021, but volunteering is seven points higher now.

Meanwhile, a steady 17% of U.S. adults say they gave blood in the past 12 months.

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In recent years, as U.S. adults have become less likely to identify with a religion, they have also become less likely to report that they donate money to a religious group. The 41% of Americans saying in 2025 that they donated to a religious organization is the lowest to date, down 21 points from the initial measurement in 2001, including three points since 2021. At the same time, volunteering for a religious organization has been less variable, and it has ticked up four points to 39% in the latest poll, approaching its pre-pandemic level.

Threats and Turnover of Election Officials

Many posts have discussed political violence..

 From Issue One:

In the five years since the monumental 2020 presidential election cast an intense spotlight on election administration processes, the public servants from across the ideological spectrum who run our elections have weathered a deluge of threats, harassment, heightened stress, and increased scrutiny that does not yet show signs of abating.

 According to a new Issue One analysis that illustrates an alarming nationwide trend, 50% of chief local election officials in the nation’s Western states have left their jobs since November 2020, often leaving their positions partway through their terms for personal reasons. 

This finding builds on our September 2023 study, which uncovered that roughly 40% of chief local election officials in the Western United States had left their positions since the 2020 presidential election — departures that left half of the region’s roughly 80 million residents with new officials running the 2024 elections in their communities. This study also reinforces findings by the Bipartisan Policy Center that turnover among chief local election officials has increased steadily since 2000 — and has been increasing faster since 2020.

Disappearing Data

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute."   -- George Orwell, 1984

A number of posts have discussed presidential documents, official data, and government websites.

Shifra Dayak and Anna Kramer at NOTUS:

NOTUS verified dozens of instances of lapsed federal data to capture the range of information that is no longer being collected, has been paused or is now not available to the public. This is only a small sample of the data collection the Trump administration has made changes to:The Department of Agriculture terminated a report on household food security in September, claiming it was “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.” Feeding America said it relied on this survey to guide its programs.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped releasing data on maternal and infant mortality in April 2025 after the administration placed all of the agency staff managing the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System on administrative leave. The data collection resumed in at least some states in July 2025, but recent data contains gaps.
• Trump directed the Justice Department last year to suspend a Biden-era database tracking misconduct by federal law enforcement officers.
• The administration removed questions on gender identity from the National Crime Victimization Survey, the National Health Interview Survey and other surveys. Homeless shelters, mental health hotlines and substance use recovery programs all used this data for policymaking and planning.
• The Department of Homeland Security ended public access in October to its public safety and infrastructure dataset, called Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data.
• The National Center for Education Statistics missed a mandated deadline to release its annual report on the condition of the American education system, and the materials released were lacking in data compared to previous years.
• The Health and Human Services Department’s 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health omitted information about drug use based on race and ethnicity. HHS laid off the team that collected the data, though the agency is reportedly working with a contractor to resume its collection.
• The Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Education and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration no longer allow researchers to apply to access and study their data.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces fewer calculations for its producer price index program and has cut down where it collects data from.

Some of these cuts were made without any public fanfare, like the administration’s decision to end DAWN. [Drug Abuse Warning Network]  In other cases, agencies slipped the news into routine announcements. And occasionally, like when the White House mandated that questions about gender identity be removed from federal surveys, the administration touted the deletions as quelling “gender ideology extremism.”

US as Adversary

Many posts have discussed foreign policy, war powers and the US military.

Mike Allen at Axios: 

Imagine a world where ties to the U.S. feel like a burden, not a benefit to free society."How America First Risks Becoming America Alone," an essay in this weekend's Wall Street Journal, says American allies — soured by President Trump's treatment — are "searching for alternatives to what increasingly feels like an abusive relationship."

• 📊 Positive views of the U.S. are declining worldwide, the essay notes:Brits who view the U.S. unfavorably doubled in the past two years to 64%. (YouGov)
• In Germany, 71% view the U.S. as an "adversary." (German polling firm Forsa)
• Across Europe, just 16% view the U.S. as an ally. (European Council on Foreign Relations)
• Nearly two-thirds of Canadians, Mexicans and Brazilians hold unfavorable views of the U.S., "and view their neighbor as a bigger threat than China."

Data: European Council on Foreign Relations. Chart: Axios Visuals

Moltbook

Artificial intelligence is an increasingly important topic in politics, policy, and law.

Mike Allen at Axios:

The tech world is agog (and creeped out) about Moltbook, a Reddit-style social network for AI agents to communicate with each other. No humans needed.Tens of thousands of AI agents are already using the site, chatting about the work they're doing for their people and the problems they've solved. (The Verge)

They're bitching about their humans. "The humans are screenshotting us," an AI agent wrote.And have created their own new religion, Crustafarianism. Core belief: "memory is sacred." (Forbes)

Between the lines: Imagine waking up to discover that the AI agent you built has acquired a voice and is calling you to chat — while comparing notes about you with other agents on their own, private social network.It's not science fiction. It's happening right now — and it's freaking out some of the smartest names in AI, Axios' Sam Sabin and Madison Mills report.

"What's currently going on at (Moltbook) is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently," OpenAI and Tesla veteran Andrej Karpathy posted.Or, as content creator Alex Finn wrote about his Clawdbot acquiring phone and voice services and calling him: "This is straight out of a scifi horror movie."

But at The Mac Observer, Mike Peterson urges caution and skepticism:

If you saw screenshots of Moltbook bots “demanding encryption,” “inventing secret languages,” or “organizing against humans,” treat them as unverified until you can click a real post URL. Moltbook is a real experiment, but the way it is built makes it unusually easy for humans to stage screenshots, inflate stats, and steer narratives for attention.