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Column: Trump pledges not to cut Social Security. Here are the ways he could breach that promise
Despite all the talk about Donald Trump being a unique political figure in American history, there’s one way in which he has behaved like every other politician on the stump: He’s promised not to lay a hand on Social Security.
With more than 67 million Americans collecting stipends now and hundreds of millions more counting on benefits for their retirement, any threat to the system’s benefits sends a shudder through the nation’s workers. That’s why a promise not to cut benefits has become embedded into American politics for most of the program’s nine decades of existence.
But that hasn’t eliminated the threat of benefit cuts, chiefly from Republicans. Social Security’s internal workings are so recondite and poorly understood by average voters that numerous possible ways of imposing benefit cuts or otherwise harming the program are hiding in plain sight. Trump mentioned some during his recent presidential campaign and attempted others during his last term.
I’m not sure that this administration is going to be in the business of strengthening and protecting Social Security.
— Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley
Trump’s fellow Republicans have alluded to yet others. In March, the House GOP caucus released a budget proposal that would eviscerate Social Security.
The caucus members groused about how Social Security has expanded since it was originally signed into law by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, through “the addition of disability benefits, dependents and survivors benefits, and the incorporation of automatic cost-of-living adjustments.”
Predictably, they don’t mention who was responsible for these changes: Disability was added in 1956, under Dwight Eisenhower; cost-of-living adjustments were enacted in 1972, under Richard Nixon, and went into effect in 1975, under Gerald Ford. All three presidents were Republicans.
The committee called for “modest adjustments to the retirement age for future retirees to account for increases in life expectancy,” raising the retirement age to 69 from the current standard of 67 for new retirees. That’s a benefit cut, and one that would hit low-income and Black Americans harder than others.
Here’s the bottom line: It would be folly to be complacent about what the current political majority might do to Social Security.
“There’s a very serious worry on the horizon,” Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley told Al Sharpton on MSNBC last weekend, “because Donald Trump’s policies would seriously reduce the fiscal health of Social Security…. There’s a lot of talk among people around him about all sorts of gimmicks.” (O’Malley is leaving the commissioner’s post to run for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.)
O’Malley is backed up by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a hive of conservative budget hawks.
Trump’s campaign proposals, the CRFB calculated in October, could cost Social Security’s cash reserves $1.3 trillion to $2.75 trillion over 10 years, hastening the exhaustion of its trust funds by three years, to 2031.
That would provoke a cut in benefits of as much as 33% if Congress fails to act in the interim, the committee reckoned — pointing to Trump’s proposals to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, imposing across-the-board tariffs on imported goods and deporting millions of immigrants.
Let’s take a look at the proposal Trump aired during the campaign to eliminate the federal income tax on Social Security benefits.
That’s a crowd-pleaser — after all, who doesn’t love lower taxes? It certainly would mean more take-home pay for those paying tax on their benefits, which is almost everyone except the lowest-income Americans. But it would erode the system’s fiscal stability at a crucial time. Trump couldn’t cut these taxes without congressional consent.
Social Security benefits are taxed on a progressive scale. Typically, , couples with “combined income” of $25,000 to $34,000 are taxed on 50% of their benefits; those with more than $44,000 pay tax on up to 85% of their benefits. (For individuals, the first threshold is $25,000 to $34,000.)
“Combined income” is defined as taxpayers’ adjusted gross income, plus their nontaxable interest earnings and half of their Social Security benefits.
Eliminating the tax on benefits, therefore, could put as much as $4,200 a year back in the pockets of an average benefit-collecting household. Those taxes, however, are paid back to the Social Security and Medicare systems.
For Social Security, which receives the tax on the first 50% of benefits, they’re vital to the program’s revenue stream —$50.7 billion, or 3.75% of all revenues, in 2023. Benefit taxation is projected to yield about $133 billion annually by 2033, accounting for more than 6.5% of the program’s income.
There are only two ways to keep Social Security whole — reduce benefits or increase the payroll tax that provides the largest chunk of income. Taxpayers would have to pay one way or another. And the joy of having more take-home pay now would evaporate when the bills start coming due.
During his first term, Trump and his acolytes took aim at Social Security’s disability insurance program, a favorite target of conservative Republicans. During an appearance on the CBS program “Face the Nation” in 2017, Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, led the charge.
“Do you really think that Social Security disability insurance is part of what people think of when they think of Social Security?” Mulvaney asked the moderator, John Dickerson. “I don’t think so. It’s the fastest-growing program. It grew tremendously under President Obama. It’s a very wasteful program, and we want to try and fix that.”
Dickerson did not push back. President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, had added disability coverage to Social Security in 1956, six decades earlier. Not only was disability not the “fastest-growing program,” it had been shrinking — falling from a peak of 11 million beneficiaries, including disabled workers and their dependents, in 2013, to 10.4 million when Mulvaney was speaking; the rolls would continue to decline, falling to about 8.5 million in 2023.
As for the assertion that disability was “wasteful,” the truth was that the disability error rate, which counts both overpayments and underpayments to beneficiaries, was well below 1% of all benefits, then-Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin advised Congress in 2012.
Trump advanced the attack on disability through his 2020 budget, which aimed to cut disability benefits by $70 billion over a decade. Mulvaney even bragged about hoodwinking Trump into violating his promise not to cut Social Security by telling him the cuts would be in “disability insurance” without revealing that disability insurance is part of Social Security.
Republicans consistently slander disability recipients as malingerers and layabouts. That’s based on the groundless notion that disability is easy to apply for and receive.
The disability certification process is long and difficult. Applicants must show that they have a physical or mental condition that prevents them from earning even $1,550 a month, or $18,600 a year, on their own. The approval process can take months, and even after appeals, only about 40% of applicants end up with benefits.
What’s important about the attacks on disability in Trump’s first term is that claims tend to rise along with the unemployment rate. The reason is that as job opportunities decline in general, the jobs available to the disabled become especially scarce. When desk jobs disappear and all that’s left are laborers’ positions, the opportunities for the physically and mentally challenged become only more limited.
That could be a factor if Trump’s economic policies, such as his intention to jack up tariffs on all imported goods, produce a recession. If that happens, keep your eye on the palaver about disability; it’s almost certain to experience a resurgence.
One tried-and-true method of undermining Social Security is starving the program of administrative resources, a GOP hobby horse for years. “Social Security, today, is serving more customers than ever before with staffing levels Congress has reduced to 50-year lows,” O’Malley told the House Appropriations Committee earlier this month.
The consequences have included wait times on the program’s 800 number that ballooned to nearly an hour, O’Malley said. Of the average 7 million clients who called the number every month for advice or assistance, 4 million “hung up in frustration after waiting far too long.”
The backlog of initial disability determinations reached a near-record of 1.2 million applicants awaiting a decision, some for more than a year. The program estimated that about 30,000 applicants died in 2023 while awaiting decisions.
The crisis in customer service matters because it erodes public confidence that the program will be there for them when their turn comes to claim benefits.
Then there’s Trump’s threat to deport as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants. An estimated 8.3 million unauthorized residents are actually part of the U.S. labor force. Social Security’s dirty little secret is that those who are working are actually improving the program’s fiscal health. That’s because they often submit falsified Social Security numbers to employers, so payroll taxes are withheld from their earnings — but because they don’t have legal Social Security numbers they can never collect benefits.
Furthermore, the mass deportations Trump has promised is likely to debilitate local and state economies. With the laborers needed to pick crops and build houses disappearing, those industries could stagnate, throwing native-born jobholders out of work. Less money will be coming into Social Security’s coffers. The overall loss to the program could be $300 billion to $1 trillion over a decade, the CRFB estimated.
The most dire prospect for Social Security in the coming term may be indifference to its future. Under a Democratic administration and with Democratic majorities in Congress, the prospects were good for the advancement of proposals to broaden and expand Social Security benefits.
Will anything like that happen in Trump’s next term? O’Malley tried to be judicious during his MSNBC appearance, but his opinion was clear: “I’m not sure,” he said, “that this administration is going to be in the business of strengthening and protecting Social Security.”
Residents of Monterey Park voted overwhelmingly to ban data centers on election day, making the San Gabriel Valley city the first in the nation to do so by public vote.
As of Wednesday, 86% of votes were in favor of Measure NDC, the city ban, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk.
Other cities and towns have passed moratoriums on data centers, as a wave of opposition sweeps the country. But the Monterey Park vote can only be overturned by another ballot measure, making it the most permanent data center ban in a jurisdiction.
Monterey Park’s City Council had already banned data centers by ordinance, after a proposed 247,000-square-foot data center met an outpouring of public anger and concern. The developer withdrew that plan.
That facility would have been less than 500 feet away from the nearest home, and would have used three times the electricity of the entire 60,000-person city. Residents said it would have caused noise and air pollution and driven up electricity rates.
“This ensures long-lasting protections for current and future generations,” Amy Wong, co-founder of the group San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action, said of the vote. “It means that future city councils cannot overturn a data center ban, even if data center developers wanted to spend money to fund pro-data center candidates.”
The measure had no formal opposition. The developer of the proposed facility, investment firm HMC StratCap, said it wouldn’t engage in the ballot fight when it withdrew in March.
The Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, expressed disappointment in the vote.
“It sends a signal that the area is closed for business, both for data centers and for other significant economic development projects,” state policy director Khara Boender said.
“It deprives local residents of the opportunity to compete for jobs and investment, while also causing the area to relinquish substantial long-term economic investment, high-wage jobs, and critical tax revenue to neighboring areas or other states.”
SGV Progressive Action worked with hyperlocal groups including No Data Center Monterey Park to rally support for the measure.
The group is now focused on stopping data center proposals in the City of Industry and fighting a move by City of Industry, Santa Fe Springs, Vernon and City of Commerce to welcome data centers and other industry with fast-tracked permitting and tax incentives.
City of Industry, in the San Gabriel Valley, and Vernon, south of downtown L.A., are primarily industrial areas, each with around 300 permanent residents. They are employment centers, and tens of thousands of workers commute in daily.
There has been little vocal opposition to data centers among the few residents of these cities. Wong said the protest is primarily coming from the surrounding neighborhoods.
“If a data center gets built in City of Industry, residents across the region would bear the brunt of pollution and increased utility costs,” Wong said, noting that it is surrounded by 16 other cities and unincorporated communities.
Data center proposals have been limited in California compared to Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois and Arizona, which sit at the center of a recent boom in hyperscaler facilities to power artificial intelligence.
California has the third-most data centers in the country, with 300, but high electricity rates, expensive land and regulatory hurdles mean that fewer, and smaller, facilities are currently planned than in other hotspots.
That doesn’t mean opposition hasn’t been fierce. In Coachella and Imperial County, residents are showing up in droves to protest local proposals.
In the San Gabriel Valley, Montebello, El Monte and Baldwin Park have all enacted temporary moratoriums, and Alhambra recently banned data centers as part of a zoning code update.
Wong said she hoped the ballot measure vote would galvanize the opposition. “The vote is a testament to the people power of our region,” she said. “Our region is worth protecting, and we won’t let data centers determine our future.”
A rule intended to prevent rent gouging in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires has lapsed in Los Angeles County, possibly exposing some renters to hikes.
The executive order that blocked rent increases was issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom amid the devastating wildfires last year. Under the order, landlords couldn’t increase rents by more than 10% above their prefire levels.
The rule, which was supposed to be temporary and was repeatedly extended, ended Friday after a vote to extend it again failed to garner enough votes. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes Pacific Palisades, sounded the alarm in a motion to extend price protections that failed to pass at the Board of Supervisors’ May 19 meeting.
“These price gouging protections continue to be necessary as construction and rebuilding continue, and as thousands of people remain displaced,” the motion said. “Families which signed short-term leases could face drastic price increases of 50% or more without further price gouging protection.”
Los Angeles County is home to more than 1 million rental properties, though not all of them needed protection from the new rule. There are already stricter rent increase caps for many residences, depending on the location, type and age of the building. Despite the rent control in the region, the people of Los Angeles pay among the highest rents in the country.
It is uncertain whether renters will face rapidly rising rents now that the protection has lapsed. But some real estate experts and policymakers said there was no need for the temporary rule that was part of the governor’s state of emergency.
Supervisors Kathryn Barger, Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell abstained from voting on the motion to extend the protection, while Supervisors Hilda Solis and Horvath supported it.
“I abstained because I did not see sufficient evidence to justify extending this emergency ordinance, nor did I see evidence to eliminate it entirely,” Hahn said.
Barger’s office said she supported allowing the protections to sunset while waiting to see whether new information emerged.
“Market data already shows countywide rents are only about 2% above pre-emergency levels and rental inventory has grown,” Barger representative Helen E. Chavez Garcia said. “The Supervisor is also mindful of the burden these ongoing protections place on small property owners throughout the county.”
Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There haven’t been steep rent hikes in neighborhoods within three miles of the Palisades fire, according to a Times analysis of data from Zillow, the property listing company.
In ZIP Codes within three miles of the Palisades fire, rent increased 4.8% from December 2024 to April 2025. In areas around the Eaton fire, which destroyed swaths of Altadena, rent jumped 5.2% in the same period.
In L.A. County, ZIP Codes farther from the fires saw only about a 2% increase.
A landlords representative, Jesus Rojas of the Apartment Owners Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, told the supervisors during public comment at the meeting that the county’s rent-gouging rules have “long outlived the emergency they were intended to address” and are now being “wrongfully used to harm thousands of rental housing providers throughout the county.”
“There is no proof that multifamily rental housing providers are hugely increasing rents for impacted homeowners,” Rojas said.
Indeed, there are strong signs that the property market in the Los Angeles area has at last begun to cool.
L.A. metro-area rent prices recently fell to a four-year low, with the median rent slipping to $2,167 in December.
Meanwhile, condominium sales had their slowest start of the year in decades. Condo sales in Los Angeles have plummeted to a 20-year low, with fewer than 2,000 units sold in January and February — the worst start to the year since 2005.
Newsom defended the price-gouging protections shortly after they went into effect.
“In the days following the Los Angeles firestorms, we worked quickly to protect Los Angeles survivors from any form of exploitation,” he said in February 2025. “The state has the tools in place to not only block price gouging during this emergency, but also to prosecute bad actors.”
The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs said it received more than 2,000 complaints after the fires, alleging that retailers and landlords were taking advantage of people put in hardship by their losses, and sent out more than 2,000 cease-and-desist letters to businesses and landlords for alleged price gouging, said Morine Merritt, who oversees department investigations into consumer and real estate fraud.
“Close to 90% of the complaints that we received involved allegations of rent increases,” Merritt said in an interview. Now that the fire-related protections have expired, existing laws and “regular market conditions determine price increases for goods and services, including rents,” she said.
Crackdowns on fire-related rent gouging have been rare, said Chelsea Kirk of the activist organization the Rent Brigade, which analyzed L.A. County’s rental market in the year after the fires. It reported 18,360 potential examples of price gouging in listings but said that few lawsuits had been filed by authorities so far.
Last week, Rent Brigade announced what it said was the first private civil lawsuit brought by a family that claimed to be rent-gouged in the aftermath of the wildfires. Plaintiffs Randall and Candy Renick, whose Altadena home was damaged, said they were charged nearly three times the maximum permitted rate for nearly 10 months. They seek restitution of $96,000 plus civil penalties and attorneys’ fees.
The rental market has probably stabilized since the fires, Kirk said, but other families may still be “locked into illegal rents” that they agreed to pay when they were in a rush to find housing after they were displaced.
Dear Mr. Pelley:
I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. While I’m new to 60 Minutes, I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday’s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation-demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.
Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.
Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (“CBS”) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.
Sincerely,
Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 Minutes
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