SOCIAL INSECURITY: The top official at the Social Security Administration quit over the weekend after members of Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency sought access to personal data about millions of Americans held by the agency. Michelle King, the acting commissioner of Social Security, became the latest road kill in the Trump administration’s effort to overrun federal agencies. 

  Musk’s representative would get access to social security numbers, tax returns, personal addresses, medical and bank records, and employment information.

  “Waste, fraud and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”

  Social Security payments account for about $1.5 trillion, or a fifth of annual federal spending. They do not deny that there’s spillage.  The Social Security Administration’s inspector general found that from 2015 to 2022, the agency paid almost $8.6 trillion in benefits and made about $71.8 billion in improper payments. It’s a lot of money, but less than 1 percent of disbursements.

  Musk’s team has faced legal challenges to getting access to the Treasury system and could also face that with the IRS.

  President Trump has been a longtime critic of the IRS  complaining that it is too aggressive in auditing his finances his finances. The IRS is preparing to lay off thousands of employees as soon as this week. 

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE: The dismantling of the federal health infrastructure under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began over the weekend with firing notices sent out to 1,200 of employees of the National Institutes for Health, the nation’s biomedical research agency. 

  Two important training programs were gutted, one that places recent public health graduates in local health departments and another that cultivates the next generation of PhD laboratory scientists.

  The layoffs so far have spared the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service that tracks disease outbreaks around the world 

SCHOOLED: The Education Department warned schools across the country that they risk losing federal funding if they continued to take race into account when making scholarship or hiring decisions, or even mention race in “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.” The letter gave schools 14 days to comply.

  The is a furtherance of President Trump’s effort to eradicate Diversity and Equity initiatives and now his administration is banning even mentions of race in educational institutions.

  Critics have said such moves are racist. But Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said special programs historically helped Black and Latino students attain college degrees at the expense of “white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

  The Ed Department said yesterday that it had $600 million in grants for training teachers in “inappropriate and unnecessary topics” such as critical race theory, social justice activism, antiracism, and “instruction on white privilege.”

TROUBLE IN GOTHAM: Four New York City deputy mayors resigned because of  Mayor Eric Adams’ indictment and evident cooperation with the Trump administration to get himself excused from prosecution.

  The four said in a joint statement that, “Due to the extraordinary events of the last few weeks and to stay faithful to the oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families, we have come to the difficult decision to step down from our roles.” 

  Adams is resisting calls for his resignation and Gov. Kathy Hochul is under pressure to remove him.

  One of the  four deputies who resigned oversees public safety and has been embroiled in the issues surround President Trump’s plans for mass deportations.

  At least a half dozen city officials had already resigned from the Adams administration following his indictment and investigations into corruption in city government. 

AIR SCARE: A Delta Air Lines flight arriving yesterday at windy and snowy Toronto Pearson Airport from Minneapolis flipped and came to rest belly up on the tarmac.  The right wing and tail structure of the jet were sheared off and there was some fire quickly brought under control.

  All 80 people onboard were evacuated but 18 were injured, several of them seriously. The amazing thing is that some passengers were taking videos on their phones even as their lives were in danger and they were evacuating.

CANCELLED: The Washington Post cancelled an advertisement placed by the group Common Cause that would have called for the resignation of Tesla billionaire Elon Musk from the Trump administration. The group said they were given no explanation.

  The ad that would have run today was what’s called a “wraparound” with the message on both the front and back of the paper’s front section. It would have been in editions delivered to the White House, the Pentagon, and Congress. Following the cancellation, Common cause in cooperation with the Southern Poverty Law center cancelled a separate ad that was to run inside the paper. 

  The decision by Post owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, not to endorse a presidential candidate last fall and his front-row presence at the Trump inauguration are causing talk that he is bowing to the anti-press president.

THE SPIN RACK: Twelve people are confirmed dead after heavy rains and floods hit Kentucky on Saturday. — Americans opposed to the early actions of President Trump took to the streets in protest across the country yesterday. One of the groups gathered in front of the US Capitol.— A Canadian tourist lost both hands when she tried to take a picture with a six-foot shark in Turks and Caicos and the creature bit her. — As bird flu decimates chicken stocks, a Wyoming woman has become the 70^th human to contract the disease since 2024. So far there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

BELOW THE FOLD:  Elon Musk’s estranged daughter Vivian said she found out she had a 12^thsibling through social media. She said, “Wow, if I had a nickel for every time I found out I had half-siblings through Reddit, I’d have two nickels.”

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