Letters from an American - March 8, 2025

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

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Music March 8th, 2025. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson made it clear that the Trump administration's goal is to slash the federal government and to privatize its current services. As the stock market has dropped and economists have warned of a dramatic slowdown in the economy, he told CNBC, there's going to be a natural adjustment as we move away from public spending to private spending. The market and the economy have just become hooked. We've become addicted to this government spending and there's going to be a detox period. Besson's comments reveal that the White House is beginning to feel the pressure of the unpopularity of its policies. Trump's rejection of 80 years of U.S. foreign policy in order to prop up Russia's Vladimir Putin

has left many Americans, as well as allies, aghast. Trump's claims that Putin wants peace were belied when Russia launched massive strikes at Ukraine as soon as Trump stopped sharing intelligence with Ukrainian forces that enabled them to shoot down incoming fire. The administration's dramatic and likely illegal and unconstitutional cuts are infuriating Americans who did not expect Trump to reorder the American government so completely. While billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump repeatedly say they are cutting only waste, fraud, and abuse from

the government, that insistence appears to be rhetorical rather than backed by fact. And yesterday, new cuts appeared to continue the gutting of government services that generally appear to be important to Americans' health, safety, and economic security. On Friday night, employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, about 80,000 of them, received an email offering them a buyout of up to $25,000 if they resign and giving them a deadline of March 14th to respond. Also as of Friday, nearly 230 cases of measles have been confirmed in Texas and New Mexico and two people have died. The Secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is frustrating even his allies with his response to the outbreak.

Kennedy, who has long been an anti-vaccine activist, said last week that Measles outbreaks were not unusual and that on Sunday he posted pictures of himself hiking above Coachella Valley in California. On Monday, the top spokesperson at HHS, a former Kennedy ally, quit in protest. As Adam Cancron of Politico reported, Kennedy has said that the measles vaccine protects children in the community, but has said the decision to vaccinate is personal and that parents should talk to health care providers about their options. He has also talked a lot about the benefits of nutritional supplements like cod liver oil, which is high in vitamin A, in

treating measles. In fact, vaccines are the key element in preventing people from contracting the disease. It's a serious role. He's just a couple of weeks in and measles is not a common occurrence and it should be all hands on deck One former Trump official told Adam Cancron Sophie Gardner and Chelsea Sorruzzo of Politico When you're taking a selfie out at Coachella, it's pretty clear that you're checked out In another blockbuster story that dropped yesterday the Social Security Administration announced it will begin to withhold 100% of a person's Social Security benefits

if they are overpaid, even if the overpayment is not their fault. Under President Joe Biden, the agency had changed the policy to recover overpayments at 10% of monthly benefits or $10, whichever was greater. Those who can't afford that level of repayment can contact Social Security, the notice says. But Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has said he plans

to cut at least 7,000 jobs, more than 12% of the agency, although its staff is already at a 50-year low. He's also closing field offices, and senior staff with the agency have either left or been fired. Dudek yesterday retracted an order from the day before that required parents of babies born in Maine to go to a Social Security office to register their baby rather than filling out a form in the hospital. Another on Thursday would also have stopped funeral homes from filing death records electronically. One new father told Joe Lawler of the Portland Press Herald that he had filled out the form

for his son's Social Security number and that his wife got a call saying they would have to go to the Social Security office. But when he tried to call Social Security headquarters to figure out what was going on, the wait time was an estimated two hours. So he called the local office where no one knew what he was talking about. They keep talking about efficiency, he said. This seems to be something

that worked incredibly efficiently, and they broke it overnight. The administration did not explain why it had imposed this rule in Maine. Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent, said he was glad the administration had changed its mind, but added that, this rapid reversal has raised concerns

among Maine people and left many unanswered questions about the Social Security Administration's motivations. Trump has said that Social Security won't be touched as his administration slashes through the federal government. Trump also said there would not be cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, but on Wednesday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which figures the financial cost of legislation, said that Republicans will either have to cut Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children's Health Insurance Program in order to meet their goal of cutting at least $880 billion from the funding controlled by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Cutting the funding for every other program in the committee's purview would save a

maximum of $135 billion, Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post noted, meaning the committee will have to turn to the biggest ticket items, health care programs. Also yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security said it was getting rid of union protections for the approximately 47,000 employees of the Transportation Security Administration, who screened about 2.5 million passengers a day before they can board airplanes. A new agreement in May 2024 raised wages for TSA workers, whose pay has lagged behind that of other government employees. Union leaders say the move is retaliation for its challenges

to the actions of the administration toward the 800,000 or so federal workers it represents. As Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times have reported more detail about the cabinet meeting Trump convened abruptly on Thursday, we have learned more about Musk's determination to cut the government. As Musk appeared to take charge of the meeting, he clashed with Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who complained that Musk's team at the Department of Government Efficiency is trying to lay off air traffic controllers. Swan and Haberman report

that Duffy asked what he was supposed to do. He continued by saying, I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers? Musk said it was a lie that they were laying off air traffic controllers and also insisted that there were people hired under diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives working as air traffic controllers. When Duffy pushed back, Musk said Duffy should call him with any concerns, an echo of the message he gave

to members of Congress. Like them, cabinet members are constitutionally part of the government. Musk is not. What Musk is, according to an interview published today by Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson in Public Notice, is a businessman who believes that there is waste wherever you look and that it is always

possible to do something more cheaply. Ryan Mack and Katie Conjure, who wrote a book about Musk's takeover of Twitter, Character Limit, said that creating confusion is part of the point. Musk creates drama, Conjure said, to scare away workers he doesn't want and attract ones he does. The pain that he is inflicting on the country is not making him popular though. Protests at Tesla dealerships that handle his cars are growing as are instances of vandalism against Tesla dealerships and charging stations which now number more than a dozen, including attacks

with bottles filled with gasoline and set on fire. Pran Shu Verma and Trisha Thadani of the Washington Post report that Tesla's stock has dropped more than 35 percent since Trump took office. Tesla sales have dropped 76 percent in Germany, 48 percent in Norway and Denmark, and 45% in France. On Thursday, another of Musk's SpaceX rockets exploded, raining debris near South Florida and the Bahamas. The Federal Aviation Administration said 240 flights were disrupted by the debris. The New York Times editorial board today lamented the instability that Musk is creating, noting that the government is not a business, that there are already signs the chaos is hurting

the economy, and that Americans can't afford for the basic functions of government to fail. If Twitter stops working, people can't tweet. When government services break down, people can die. The editorial board did not let Trump hide behind Musk entirely, noting that he has increased instability not only with the Department of Government Efficiency, but also with his flurry of executive orders purporting to rewrite environmental policy, the meaning of the 14th amendment and more, his on-again-off-again tariffs, and his inversion of American foreign policy, wooing Vladimir Putin while disdaining longtime allies.

One of the things that the radical extremists in power hated about the modern American state was that it was a nonpartisan machine that functioned pretty well regardless of which party was in charge. Now, Musk, who is acting as if he is not bound by the Constitution that set up that machine, is taking a sledgehammer to it. In the public notice interview, Thor Benson asked Ryan Mack, what's something about Elon's huge role in the Trump administration that people perhaps aren't understanding? Mack answered that Musk is the manifestation of the nation's extreme wealth inequality. What happens, he asked, when there is unfettered capitalism that allows people to accumulate this much money and this much power? Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions,

Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.