Umair
Elon Musk keeps talking about Social Security.
Two weeks ago, he called it a Ponzi scheme. This week, he suggested that his Department of Government Efficiency would scrutinize the agency’s spending. And he has repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that Social Security payments are flowing to undocumented immigrants and dead people.
The latest sign of his interest in the agency came today, when my colleagues Theodore Schleifer, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac reported that one of Musk’s closest advisers had taken a position there.
The adviser is Antonio Gracias, a private equity investor who lent Musk $1 million during Tesla’s early days and has vacationed with his family in places like Jackson Hole, Wyo. Gracias’ involvement may be the clearest sign yet that Musk considers the agency a key priority. He is one of nine members of the Department of Government Efficiency who have arrived there in recent days, my colleagues wrote. Two others work at Gracias’ investment firm.
We don’t know exactly what Gracias’ role is. But a court filing last week offered one glimpse of DOGE’s early activities in the agency. In the filing, which The Washington Post covered in detail, Tiffany Flick, a career agency official who retired in mid-February, said the group’s representatives appeared to be seeking sensitive information and data that fell into three categories: allegations about benefits being paid out to deceased people; concerns about multiple benefits going to a single Social Security number; and payments going to people without a Social Security number.
Flick said all of those concerns were “invalid.” But they do align with the false allegations about fraud that Musk and President Trump have been making in public — which Democrats say Republicans intend to use as a pretense for scrutiny and cuts.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly denied that they have plans to cut Social Security benefits, which Republicans have long avoided doing for fear of political blowback.
“They’re not going to cut Social Security. They’re not going to cut Medicare. They’re not — that’s just fearmongering from the left,” said Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s 2024 campaign managers, in an interview with Politico published this morning.
LaCivita didn’t claim that Musk wasn’t interested in cuts to those programs. Instead, he argued that Musk wasn’t as influential as Democrats have suggested.
“He’s not president, he’s not president” LaCivita said, referring to Musk. “He doesn’t get to make those decisions.”
AGENCY REPORT
Musk goes to the N.S.A.
It seems as if Musk has been everywhere in Washington — but, until yesterday, he was not known to have visited a spy agency.
According to a spokesman for the National Security Agency, Musk paid a visit to that agency on Wednesday. It’s a notable visit, my colleague Julian Barnes, who covers intelligence, explained:
The N.S.A. is one of the two most important intelligence agencies. It’s is all about penetrating computer and telecom networks. No one is better at it. Musk may have ideas about how it could do its work better, or he may just want to learn more about how they do what they do.
The N.S.A. is a hulking bureaucratic agency, Julian said, and there may well be ways for it to work more efficiently. There are also potential conflicts of interest as Musk enters the agency.
The N.S.A. has technology and cyber tools that would benefit almost any of Musk’s companies. The N.S.A. also has some of the most sensitive — and most current — secrets the government has collected. There is no indication yet that Mr. Musk wants access to that material, but traditionally the agency has been reluctant to allow anyone unfettered access to its material.
More on government agencies
The U.S. Postal Service has agreed to work with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The service plans to cut 10,000 of its employees through a voluntary-retirement program.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, is suing the Homeland Security Department to prevent the Trump administration from canceling its contract with Transportation Security Administration workers.
MEANWHILE on X
Musk shared, then deleted, a post excusing dictators
Musk is using his X account as a megaphone. My colleague Kate Conger is listening closely and guiding you through his most important messages.
Early today, Musk shared a post written by an X user about the actions of three 20th-century dictators — then quickly deleted it after it prompted a backlash.
The post falsely claimed that Joseph Stalin, the communist leader of the Soviet Union until 1953; Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party in Germany; and Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, didn’t cause the deaths of millions of people under their watch. Instead, the post said, their public-sector workers did.
Musk shared the post without any other comment. He removed it soon after users on X criticized the post, saying it was antisemitic and dismissive of genocide. Historians have widely chronicled that millions of people died under Stalin in the 1950s, that millions of Jews were massacred under Hitler during the Holocaust and that millions of Chinese were displaced or killed during Mao’s cultural revolution.
It was the latest post by Musk to devolve into controversy. In 2023, Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X as “the actual truth” of what Jewish people were doing, prompting advertisers to flee. And after an assassination attempt on Trump last year, Musk wrote — then deleted — a post suggesting it was odd that nobody had tried to kill former President Joe Biden or former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Musk has long appeared to favor strongmen and has promoted right-wing modern-day leaders. He has repeatedly used X to support politicians like Javier Milei of Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Narendra Modi of India, leaders in countries where he also has business interests. Most recently, he threw his support behind the hard-right Alternative for Germany party.
“It is deeply disturbing and irresponsible for someone with a large public platform to elevate the kind of rhetoric that serves to undermine the seriousness of these issues,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement about Musk’s sharing of the post.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
— Kate Conger
AROUND THE COUNTRY
The politics of Musk heat up
Democrats are planning a nationwide series of town halls as they seek to draw attention to Republicans’ reluctance to hold such events. If they’re anything like the town hall that one Republican, Representative Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, held last night, Musk’s name is going to come up a lot. Here’s what my colleague Katie Glueck heard from voters there:
Democrats around the country believe that talking about Musk can help them reconnect with voters who are tired of hearing about Trump. And in Asheville, N.C., a Democratic stronghold, I saw some evidence that they might be right.
An overwhelmingly liberal crowd packed into a community college auditorium to register its displeasure with Edwards, a second-term Republican who represents western North Carolina.
Those present brought up Musk over and over again, complaining about him specifically and criticizing the federal work force cuts initiated by his Department of Government Efficiency, even as Edwards defended the need to reduce wasteful spending.
“You’re afraid of Musk!” one attendee shouted at the congressman. Another asked if Edwards would be willing to cut his own staff.
As Edwards gamely tried to work the room, another voter, Chris Boehme, 78, told the lawmaker that he was deeply worried by DOGE-led cuts to the Veterans Affairs Department.
“You’ve got to stick up for vets,” said Boehme, who wore a hat reading “Grumpy Old Vet.”
“You’ve got a great V.A. hospital here,” he said. “It needs to be funded.”
— Katie Glueck
