Carole Leonard

Elon Is Coming for Your Social Security Plus: Don’t call it a “State of the Union” speech.

"Democrats, in theory, could try and stave this off by including more funding for the SSA in the upcoming government funding bill. But the reality is that Trump and DOGE may very well ignore whatever language they pass into law."

WASHINGTON (AP) - Trump administration plans to cut over 80,000 employees from Veterans Affairs, according to internal memo.

AARP Urges Outreach to Congress to Protect Social Security Older Americans continue to raise concerns about payments, customer service

AARP has created an easy way to contact your lawmakers and tell them Social Security must be protected. Learn more.👇

Beware Trump’s Talk of Coming “Emergencies” Far-right rhetoric is suffused with dark talk of impending calamities. It’s a favorite trope of autocrats who are, themselves, the calamity.

The nation’s lawyers, lawmakers, and judges are going to be tested as never before. Trump is not acting in good faith, and his lawlessness must be challenged on every front.

People Are Paying Millions to Dine With Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago Business leaders are paying as much as $5 million to meet one-on-one with the president at his Florida compound, sources tell WIRED, while others are paying $1 million apiece to dine with him in a gro...

Trying to wrap your mind around what's happened this week (it's Wednesday)? Same...

So for our clarity (and possibly yours) we're resharing some WIRED scoops in this refresher thread, starting with business leaders paying millions of dollars to dine with President Donald Trump.

Of course they do

We Need More Fighters Like Al Green! Bless this guy.

Only one man in that chamber understood the moment and had the courage to stand up to the bully, right to his bloated orange face.

How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Could Fuel a Prison Labor Boom Lacking an available pool of migrant labor, the United Stated has historically turned to another vulnerable group—incarcerated people.

“The shift from forced labor… laid the groundwork for the contemporary reliance on incarcerated people to fill labor shortages, not just in prisons but in industries like agriculture”

7 in 10 US farmworkers are foreign born; 40+% are undocumented

The Trump deportations will be BIG for prison labor

Alexander Vindman: Lindsey Graham is an absolute coward. Trump didn’t sound strong—he was attacking an ally when he didn’t need to. All Zelenskyy said was that Trump couldn’t trust Putin. And JD Vance—he looked like an absolute clown. I don’t understand why Trump let Vance blow up his deal.

HEY EVERYONE REMEMBER WHEN TRUMP WAS IMPEACHED FOR DENYING AID TO UKRAINE BECAUSE HE WANTED ZELENSKY TO LIE AND SAY BAD THINGS ABOUT BIDEN AND ZELENKSY WOULDN’T DO IT?

Maybe literally one fucking American newspapers could mention this in their, “think pieces,” about what happened yesterday.

Fascism Came to Idaho—and Hundreds of People Just Sat and Watched At a Kootenai County Republican Central Committee meeting at Coeur d'Alene High School in Idaho, a woman was bound and forcefully removed by a group of unidentified men for supposedly interrupting the...

We need to inventory what matters to us enough to move, not in disconnected safety that makes our choices easy, but in the crucible of uninvited brutality that will call us to respond.

That moment is coming for all of us.

johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/fascism-ca...

www.rawstory.com/video-marsha...

The Most Disgraceful Act of Betrayal I’ve Ever Seen This is just despicable.

Zelenskyy declines to apologize to Donold after heated meeting. Good.

Cut-rate care: the systemic problems shaping 'healthcare' behind bars In correctional healthcare systems, care is secondary to controlling costs and avoiding lawsuits -- a problem plaguing both private and public healthcare delivery. What will it take to get people the…

What's shaping "healthcare" behind bars? Hint: It's not patient needs.

Read our new report 👇

Pie chart titled: Almost 65,000 people are confined for immigration reasons

Thousands of people detained by ICE are actually held in local, publically operated jails

These facilities–run by elected sheriffs–are making money off of the incarceration of people who are mostly accused of no more serious offense than crossing the border without permission

Pie chart titled: Incarceration is just one piece of the much larger system of correctional control.

We heard Jeff Bezos wants @postopinions.bsky.social to focus on "defending personal liberties," so we put together some ideas for him to pitch 🧵

For starters, the US controls the lives of more than 5.7 million people through the carceral system
www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2...

As Poverty Rises in New York City, 1 in 4 Can’t Afford Essentials The share of New Yorkers in poverty is nearly double the national average, according to a report from Columbia University and an anti-poverty group.

"26% of children in NYC live in poverty" – that's 420,000 kids whose families cannot afford basic necessities.

Poverty IS a criminal justice issue, especially for children who often end up being criminalized at a young age instead of receiving support.
https://buff.ly/3FarfFa

We’ve received too many reports about GOP voicemails being full for this to be a coincidence.

If your Republican representative is avoiding you, show up to one of their local offices.

You can also send an email to make it clear you don’t want to pay the price for the GOP’s billionaire tax breaks.

My god. Can Mexico provide our flu shots? Canada? Maybe our state governments?

$38 BILLION and counting — Stop calling Elon Musk “the richest man in the world”, start calling him “the biggest hypocrite in the world”

Jane Roberts, who is married to Chief Justice John Roberts, made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms, whistleblower documents show New documents reveal Jane Roberts made $10.3 million from elite firms, raising questions about the Supreme Court justices' conflicts of interest.

ICYMI: Jane Roberts, wife of Chief Justice John Roberts was paid more than $10 million by a host of elite law firms, a whistleblower alleges. At least one of those firms argued a case before Roberts after paying his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars. www.businessinsider.com/jane-roberts...

Senior citizens are rattled by news that telehealth coverage could expire next month Advocates say the coverage has bipartisan support, but efforts to make it permanent have been unsuccessful thus far.

For Kaye Peterson, the expansion of telehealth coverage during the pandemic was a godsend.

Now she's reckoning with how she'd manage without it if Congress doesn't renew it before the coverage ends on March 31.

From @stephaniekelton.bsky.social : “PARTISAN DISHONESTY” of Trump & Musk’s “Doge Dividend Checks” plan stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/stimulus-c...

sending people checks is only inflationary when Dems do it?🤷🏻👇🏽 — They pretend to care about the debt, a political game to set up tax cuts for the rich

He wants Elon to hurt more people, even as his poll numbers are down not up: www.instagram.com/reel/DGTS6V4...

There’s a book about leaders counting on the truth not reaching their supporters. It’s called ‘1984’ — forget “Truth Social”, it’s “Ministry of Truth Social”

Graph titled: More than 1 in 3 people in state prison were first arrested before their 16th birthday

More than 1 in 3 people were first arrested before their 16th birthday – does this look like a society that cares about uplifting youth, or imprisoning them?