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In swing states, both parties agree on ideas to save Social Security
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Social Security Still Works, but Its Future Is Up to Us
Dec 29, 2025
Like many people over 60 and thinking seriously about retirement, I’ve been paying closer attention to Social Security, and recent changes have made me concerned.
Since its creation during the Great Depression, Social Security has been one of the most successful federal programs in U.S. history. It has survived wars, recessions, demographic change, and repeated ideological attacks, yet it continues to do what it was designed to do: provide a basic floor of income security for older Americans. Before Social Security, old age often meant poverty, dependence on family, or institutionalization. After its adoption, a decent retirement became achievable for millions.
The data tells a clear story about poverty reduction. In 1959, more than one in three seniors lived below the poverty line. Today, that figure is closer to one in ten, largely because of Social Security. Remove the program from the equation, and senior poverty would surge to levels not seen in generations. This is not a marginal safety net. It is the central pillar of retirement security for a large share of older Americans, including roughly 40 percent of retirees who rely on it for at least half of their income.
International comparisons reinforce the point. Many peer democracies, including Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, rely more heavily on public pensions than the United States, but the underlying logic is the same: predictable, universal retirement income reduces elder poverty. Higher senior poverty rates in the U.S. reflect the thinness of the broader retirement system, not a failure of Social Security itself. In practice, the program often compensates for gaps elsewhere in the American welfare state.
That record makes Social Security’s trajectory under President Trump more concerning. Recent changes do not amount to sweeping benefit cuts, but they do alter how the program is funded, administered, and accessed. Social Security is not a failed program in need of radical reinvention. It is a successful one under strain, increasingly asked to absorb rising health care costs, disappearing pensions, and widening inequality. The question is not whether Social Security works. It plainly does. The question is whether policymakers will strengthen it or quietly undermine it through incremental changes that shift risk back onto seniors.
The First Wave of Changes
The changes that come next emerge less from headline legislation than from a steady accumulation of administrative decisions that reshape how the program functions day to day. They also fit squarely within the administration’s broader Department of Government Efficiency agenda, which emphasizes cost containment, automation, and workforce reduction across federal agencies.
This year, the Trump administration began altering Social Security through administrative and operational moves rather than major legislation. Cast as efficiency and modernization measures, these changes nonetheless carry real consequences for beneficiaries.
First, the administration ended Biden-era limits on overpayment recovery, allowing the Social Security Administration to recoup funds more aggressively. Because overpayments often result from agency error, the shift exposes retirees on fixed incomes to sudden benefit reductions with little ability to absorb the loss.
Second, the administration eliminated paper checks, requiring beneficiaries to receive payments electronically. While routine for most retirees, the change creates barriers for very elderly Americans and those without stable banking access, turning a technical adjustment into an access problem.
Third, the administration tightened identity verification requirements in the name of fraud prevention. Protecting the system is a legitimate goal, but heightened ID checks often function as gatekeeping devices, particularly for seniors with disabilities, outdated documents, or limited digital literacy.
Taken together, these steps point to a quiet but consequential shift, with the heaviest effects falling on low-income seniors, people with disabilities, and others who rely most heavily on in-person assistance and predictable benefits. Rather than cutting benefits outright, the administration is making Social Security leaner, more automated, and less forgiving. These changes attract little attention, but they shape how millions of Americans experience the program.
The Next Phase: Tax Relief, Reduced Access, and a Shift of Risk
The next round of changes, scheduled for 2026, extends this pattern. Instead of addressing Social Security’s long-term financing challenges directly, the administration has favored measures with short-term political appeal that defer hard choices and shift risk onto beneficiaries.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to eliminate federal taxes on Social Security benefits. That pledge never became law, largely because doing so would have accelerated the program’s insolvency. Instead, Congress enacted an enhanced tax deduction for Americans aged 65 and older. Beginning in 2026, some retirees will owe less federal tax on their benefits, and some will owe none at all. The relief is temporary, set to expire in 2028, and does little to stabilize the trust fund.
At the same time, the Social Security Administration plans to sharply reduce in-person services. Internal targets call for cutting field office visits roughly in half, accelerating the shift to online and phone-based systems. Field offices have long served as the program’s front door, providing hands-on help with retirement claims, disability applications, and benefit disputes. For seniors with limited digital access or complex cases, digital access is not a convenience but a necessity.
Seen together, these changes reveal a consistent governing approach, one enabled by congressional acquiescence and defined by administrative retrenchment and risk shifting rather than overt benefit cuts. Benefits are not being slashed outright, but access is narrowing, administrative burdens are rising, and fiscal pressures are being postponed. The result is a quieter form of retrenchment that preserves the appearance of stability while shifting real consequences onto millions of seniors, especially those least equipped to absorb new administrative and financial burdens.
Conclusion: A Program That Works, If Congress and the Administration Choose to Protect It
Social Security’s great strength has always been its reliability. It does not promise wealth, but it has delivered something more important: dignity and security in old age. That achievement was not accidental. It reflects deliberate political choices to pool risk broadly, administer benefits simply, and treat retirement security as a collective responsibility.
What is happening now is not the sudden dismantling of Social Security, but something subtler.
Rather than relying on piecemeal administrative changes, Congress and the president should work together on durable reforms that preserve the program’s legacy and strengthen its long-term foundations. An important step Congress could take is to bolster Social Security’s finances through permanent revenue measures, such as raising or eliminating the payroll tax cap so high earners contribute at the same rate as everyone else. Administrative efficiency should not come at the expense of access for millions, so lawmakers should also require a baseline level of in-person service at Social Security field offices. Finally, Congress should assert stronger oversight of Social Security Administration decisions, including reporting requirements and clear guardrails to prevent misguided cost-cutting efforts from undermining benefit delivery.
The danger is not that Social Security will fail overnight, but that it will be slowly hollowed out. A program that still works remarkably well could become harder to navigate, less predictable, and less protective, especially for the seniors who depend on it most. That outcome is not inevitable; it is the result of political decisions. The question now is whether policymakers will honor that legacy by acting decisively to pass sensible, lasting reforms that strengthen the program rather than allowing it to erode.
Robert Cropf is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University.
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How Texas’ Housing Changes Betray Its Most Vulnerable Communities
Dec 27, 2025
While we celebrate the Christmas season, hardworking Texans, who we all depend on to teach our children, respond to emergencies, and staff our hospitals, are fretting about where they will live when a recently passed housing bill takes effect in 2026.
Born out of a surge in NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) politics and fueled by a self-interested landlord lawmaker, HB21 threatens to deepen the state’s housing crisis by restricting housing options—targeting affordable developments and the families who depend on them.
The drastic changes in housing policy will have particularly devastating consequences for underserved communities across the state. Texas’s Latino community is a prime example. State data shows that a substantial portion of Texans who rely on income-restricted housing are Latino, and many of the neighborhoods where these developments are located are historically Latino areas already grappling with rising rents and stagnant wages.
In particular, a retroactive tax that is part of the law threatens to wipe out the affordability that has allowed these families to stay rooted in their communities, pushing them toward displacement at a scale not seen in years.
HB21 was pitched as a needed reform to deliver clarity and accountability to Texas’s affordable housing framework. The bill gained popularity among legislators, who bought into the narrative that it would close an alleged tax loophole for developers in the affordable housing space who partnered with government entities known as housing finance corporations (HFCs).
Yet in practice, HB21 reflects lawmakers' willingness to rush housing policy in response to political pressure rather than economic reality.
In places like San Antonio, El Paso, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley, where affordable housing is already scarce, HB21 all but guarantees deeper housing insecurity, longer commutes for service-sector workers, and the erosion of cultural and economic anchors that have defined these communities for generations. Instead of expanding opportunity, HB21 effectively targets the very families who contribute so much to Texas’s workforce and cultural identity, making it harder for people to live where they work, raise their children, and build long-term wealth.
The bill was meant to overhaul the process through which affordable housing developers in qualify for tax exemptions from the state. But the legislation that passed went even further, applying retroactively to hundreds of completed affordable housing projects. That means buildings currently renting to working-class Texans at affordable rates stand to lose their tax exemptions and face huge bills that could force them to reconsider their ability to rent at those lower rates.
Thus, the law will destabilize public-private partnerships, deliberately unraveling of the very agreements that enabled the private sector to invest in affordable housing in the first place.
Developers are already warning that mass evictions and foreclosures could follow.
Even worse, the bill’s chief architect, Representative Gary Gates (R-28), has previously drawn scrutiny for potential conflicts of interest, as critics note that the restructuring of tax incentives and appraisal rules is likely to benefit his sprawling real estate portfolio directly.
Those effects justifiably raise serious concerns about whether HB21 was designed to serve Texans or to serve Gates. In fact, Rep. Gates recently set up an entity to serve as a front for his own properties and to intervene in a lawsuit challenging HB21 as unconstitutional. Critics argue that the maneuver is effectively an admission by Gates that his businesses will benefit from HB21 and would be hurt by the lawsuit challenging the law.
Housing advocates are fighting back to prevent HB21 from inflicting further damage. The Texas Workforce Housing Coalition recently filed suit, pointing out that HB21 is being used to retroactively strip tax exemptions from affordable housing projects that were legally established under prior law. The bill was set to go into full effect on Jan 1, 2027, but housing districts across the state are already stripping properties of previously granted approvals and exemptions.
For years, developers partnered with local housing finance corporations (HFCs) to produce units reserved for working families, relying on contractual tax exemptions that made these deals viable. HB21 requires rewriting these contracts after the fact, resulting in chaos: agreements are being questioned, financing structures disrupted, and long-term commitments disrupted.
Given the sweeping consequences HB21 is already producing, and the fact that tens of thousands of Texans stand to be affected, the Texas Legislature should immediately commission an independent, data-driven study examining the law’s economic, housing, and displacement impacts before they fully cascade across the state. Sound policymaking demands evidence, transparency, and deliberation, not rushed legislation that upends communities after the fact.
At the same time, the controversy surrounding HB21 underscores a deeper structural problem in Texas governance: the absence of an independent ethics commission with real enforcement authority. Texas lawmakers should move without delay to establish an ethics body empowered to investigate and sanction conflicts of interest, including cases like the one alleged against Rep. Gary Gates. Legislation that directly benefits—or even appears to benefit—a lawmaker’s private financial holdings erodes public trust. Without oversight and enforcement mechanisms, that erosion accelerates. Texans need politicians and policies that work for them, not against them.
The consequences of failing to uphold that standard are already clear. Texans have seen what happens when housing instability spreads unchecked: employers struggle to retain workers, schools lose students, and families who have invested years in their communities are pushed out. HB21 risks accelerating all of those harms. If Texas is serious about affordability, growth, and fairness, lawmakers must pause, study the damage, and act decisively. not just to fix a flawed housing law, but to reform the ethical safeguards that failed to prevent it.
Mario H. Lopez is the president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a public policy advocacy organization that promotes liberty, opportunity, and prosperity for all.
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Let America Vote to Welcome Its 51st Star
Dec 27, 2025
I’m an American who wants Puerto Rico to become America’s 51st state—and I want the entire country to be able to say “yes” at the ballot box. A national, good-faith, vote would not change the mechanics of admission; it would change the mood. It would turn a very important procedural step into a shared act of welcome—millions of Americans from all 50 states affirming to 3.2 million residents of Puerto Rico that they belong in full.
Across the map, commentators are already making that case. Georgia GOP chair Josh McKoon put it bluntly: “Unlike Canadians, Puerto Ricans actually want to become a state.” Jacksonville Journal-Courier
From Florida, Erika Benfield argues that supporting statehood is “not just fair—it’s now in the interest of Republican voters,” urging both parties to back it. Arizona’s Jaime Molera tells fellow conservatives, “In the recent election, Puerto Ricans made it explicitly clear that they are ready to vote for Republicans, and they are ready for statehood.” The Floridianazcapitoltimes.com
New York voices are in the mix, too. Writing in City Limits, veteran Tony Mele reminded readers that “in the past eight years, Puerto Rico residents have repeatedly voted against continuing under the current territory status.” City Limits
These writers aren’t debating legal fine print; they’re talking about dignity, clarity, and momentum. A national vote would spotlight facts, sweep aside myths (“they don’t pay taxes”) and let communities take down barriers and openly talk about culture and language. Most of all, it would give residents of Puerto Rico something priceless: proof that their fellow Americans chose them on purpose, not by default.
Critics like the Albuquerque Journal want Congress to slow down until every doubt is settled—the paper even warned that Senator Heinrich’s Puerto Rico statehood bill “could cost New Mexico one of its three U.S. House seats.” Heinrich’s Puerto Rican statehood bill could cost NM 1 of its 3 US House seats I want America to speed up how we settle those doubts: in public, together, with a Welcome Vote that replaces rumor with record and hesitation with a handshake.
So let’s pair congressional action with a public gesture on purpose. Call it a National Welcome Vote. Wrap it in a year of town halls, classroom lessons, service projects, and televised forums linking mainland communities with Puerto Rico. Then—ballot cast, message sent—move straight into the work of integration: tax alignment, full program parity, education systems that serve all Americans, infrastructure upgrades, and regulatory harmony. No more years of “should we have done this?”—just “let’s do this right.”
We say democracy is not a spectator sport. Let’s stop treating Puerto Rico’s future like a closed-door event. Congress can admit Puerto Rico. The rest of us can stand and cheer—in the clearest civic voice we have: a vote cast in hope. Let’s add a star—and let America say so.
Javier Ortiz has over 37 years of experience in technology, business, and the public sector, leads investment technical due diligence and innovation at Falcon Cyber Investments. www.falconcyber.com
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Two Myths Fuel the Trump Administration’s Anti-Immigrant Scapegoating
Dec 26, 2025
On December 9th, US Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller went on another xenophobic rant. He claimed that, “If Somalians cannot make Somalia successful, why would we think that the track will be any different in the United States? […] If Libya keeps failing, if the Central African Republic keeps failing, if Somalia keeps failing, right? If these societies all over the world continue to fail, you have to ask yourself, if you bring those societies into our country, and then give them unlimited free welfare, what do we think is going to happen?”
Like so many in the Trump administration, Miller blames America’s failures on immigrants. Why is our educational system faltering? Immigrants. Miller claims that, “If you subtract immigration out of test scores, all of a sudden scores skyrocket!”
Why are Americans unable to get jobs? Immigrants. Last year on the campaign trail, Trump claimed that immigrants are stealing “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.” (Whatever those are.)
Why are Americans unable to succeed? Immigrants. Vice President J.D. Vance calls “mass migration a theft of the American Dream.”
From housing to the crime rate to the drug crisis to healthcare to affordability, the problem is always immigrants. The Trump administration defends these remarks by, again, blaming immigrants. On December 10th, President Trump remarked that, “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few? Let us have a few from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Do you mind? We always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they’re good at is going after ships.” For Trump, because Somalia is “filthy, dirty, disgusting,” we should not allow Somalis to enter the US. Because Norway, Denmark and Sweden are ‘clean’ countries, we can admit their citizens.
This is the basis of the Trump administration’s xenophobia: immigrants fail here because they come from impoverished countries. Those countries are ‘bad’ because the people are ‘bad.’ If those ‘bad’ people weren’t in the US, then the ‘good’ people could make America great again.
This narrative is extremely popular among MAGA conservatives. However, it is false. This scapegoating narrative relies entirely on two myths: the myth of “American exceptionalism” and the myth of “third world mediocrity”
The Myth of “American Exceptionalism”
“American exceptionalism” refers to the idea that the US is distinct from other countries because its foundation rests on the principles of individualism and freedom. These values uniquely shape the American identity, thereby making Americans exceptional.
Trump often appeals to this notion. For instance, in his 2025 inaugural address, Trump remarked that, “America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more exceptional than ever before.” He further added, “We will be a nation like no other: full of compassion, courage and compassion, courage and exceptionalism.” The promise of the Trump Golden Age is precisely a promise to restore the exceptionalism that America lost due to “migration from all Third World Countries.”
American exceptionalism is, however, an illusion. America’s success relies on many factors including exploiting the poor, slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and immigration. Even the extent to which the US has embraced the ideal of freedom has been largely due to the Civil Rights Movement and other anti-oppression struggles.
Americans do not have some inherent aptitude towards freedom – they are, like any other people, taught to love and embrace others, or to irrationally hate anyone who is different. Freedom is not an exclusively Western ideal. It does not belong to any nation or to any particular people.
The Myth of “Third World Mediocrity”
The second myth is that colonialism, imperialism and racism either never existed or had little impact on poorer countries in South America, Africa and Asia. This revisionist history is the other side of American exceptionalism: the myth of “Third World mediocrity.” The idea is that, if “third world” countries have failed to succeed, it’s not because of external forces that impeded their development, but rather a reflection of the quality of its citizens.
This is apparent in Miller’s comments. In his view, “third world” immigrants will always “replicate the conditions that they left over and over and over again!” We see this myth when Trump refers to Somalia as “barely a country” and Somali immigrants as “garbage.” The two are inseparable to him.
What Trump and his allies fail to recognize (or at least admit) is that the reason why countries like Somalia struggle, and the reason why immigrants of color struggle, is largely due to colonialism, imperialism and racism.
Take Somalia, for instance: during the late 1960s and 1970s, Somalia implemented a number of progressive policies, including widening access to primary education, mass literacy campaigns, and public health initiatives. While these policies were working, the US worried about Somalia’s burgeoning relationship with the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Somalia and Ethiopia became entangled in Cold War politics, until eventually the US invaded Somalia in 1993. This was done under the auspices of providing humanitarian relief, yet resulted in the massacre of Somali leaders, intellectuals, businesspeople and citizens. According to a New York Times article from December 1993, approximately 6,000 to 10,000 Somalis were killed by the US during a four month period. In 1994, the US withdrew, leaving Somalia in ruin. Fleeing the war and its aftermath, many Somalis came to the US, especially Minnesota. Since then, Somali Americans have faced persistent anti-Black racism and Islamophobia.
Somali Americans are not unique in this respect. Whether Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya or so many other countries Trump describes as “hellholes,” a similar pattern persists: the US (or another Western power) destabilizes a country or region abroad. This fuels mass migration. Those migrants move to the US (or another Western country) ready to make a life for themselves only to be met with discrimination and prejudice. This is the truth that Trump and his allies are either entirely ignorant of or, what’s more likely, hoping you’ll never figure out.
Resisting Myths, Lies and Scapegoating
Trump’s scapegoating is racist and xenophobic, but it’s also tactical. The real reason why Americans are struggling is due to wealth inequalities and a lack of robust social safety nets. The problems are material. Immigrants are simply an easy scapegoat that allows Trump to sidestep making any real changes, while continuing to profit from the status quo. It gives his supporters a concrete enemy to distract them from the real systematic problems that plague this country.
In the end, these myths marginalize immigrants and maintain an oppressive status quo for citizens. We need to move past them, and here’s three things we can do to achieve that:
First, those on the political left, especially elected officials, need to change how we defend the rights of immigrants. Arguing that “this is a nation of immigrants” or that immigrants deserve dignity is not enough. While those points are true, our arguments and messaging need to focus specifically on dismantling the myths that underlie the Trump administration’s scapegoating. To this end, we need to bring more attention to the ways that US intervention abroad has fueled the immigration crisis that Trump and his allies now exploit for political gain. We need to force conservatives to grapple with the specific histories of US involvement in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan and so many other countries. Beyond the question of who built this country or appeals to human rights, we need to make clear that the US owes a debt to the people it has displaced. Immigration is not a privilege; it is just compensation for historical and contemporary wrongs.
Adopting this approach will be particularly important as the US pushes closer to regime change in Venezuela. If the history of US regime change is anything to go by, Trump’s unjust and illegal invasion will cause more suffering, destabilize the region and fuel more migration.
Second, we need to be more specific about how we talk about social inequalities and change. The reason why immigrants are so easily scapegoated is because the narrative is simple – ‘those people are responsible for your problems.’ We need to adopt a similar, but more truthful approach. For example, if Vice President Vance wants to blame immigrants for the affordability crisis at a Uline warehouse, then we should draw attention to the Uihlein family that owns that company. We should point out that they spend millions lobbying for less government regulation and against unions. They have given money to think tanks like the Foundation of Government Accountability that advocates for loosening child labor protections. We should point out that Elizabeth Uihlein blames the Affordable Care Act for giving young people the freedom to leave their employers at their own discretion.
Blaming immigrants is easy when the true culprits of social inequality are largely unknown to the public. We need to expose them. If Trump supporters want specific people to blame, then we should give them the real people who are actively working to grow their own wealth at the expense of the rest of us.
Third, we need to highlight policies that directly aim at tackling issues of affordability, healthcare and housing. This includes New York Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s proposal for city-owned grocery stores, Tennessee Representative Aftyn Behn’s call for more robust rent control and increasing wages, House Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez’s advocacy for tuition-free public colleges, New Mexico’s no-cost universal childcare policy, Oregon’s statewide shelter program that helps people transition from homelessness into housing stability, congressional support for Medicare For All, among many other examples.
The Trump administration has to distract their constituents with scary boogeymen because they ultimately lack any solutions. This is why President Trump has to dismiss the affordability crisis as a “hoax.” This is why Vice President Vance – almost a year into the second Trump administration – is still blaming former President Biden for the current state of the economy. By contrast, there are Democrats, whether elected or running in 2026, with concrete plans designed to help the poor and middle class.
Republicans have been blaming immigrants since the 1990s. Yet despite spending billions on more militarized anti-immigrant policing, those issues persist. Immigrants are not the problem. But things won’t change unless we expose these lies, myths and scapegoating, and begin advocating for actual solutions. If we do this, then we can forge a better future for everyone.
Jordan Liz is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at San José State University. He specializes in issues of race, immigration and the politics of belonging.
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