Social Security Administration planned job cuts leave many seniors in Puget Sound alarmed
While President Donald Trump has insisted that he is not touching Social Security, which has more than 70 million recipients, he is planning to realign the government by reducing jobs of several high-profile agencies, including the SSA.
Weeks ago, the Social Security Administration announced plans to cut around 7,000 employees, or about 12% of its workforce.
The agency has also been hit by a bevy of changes.
The Social Security Administration announced last month that it would require in-person identity checks for new and existing beneficiaries, with some limited exemptions. It also announced that recipients would no longer be able to change their direct deposit and other banking information with the agency by phone, claiming it could lead to fraud.
Instead, recipients will be required to use the agency's website or visit a local office.
But for George Martinson, of Fircrest, who's been receiving the benefits for 17 years, he said he's now facing hurdles to get help with his concerns, including if his benefits will be delayed after the president's announcements.
'We were turned away right at the door, saying that you couldn't go into the office without an appointment,' he said. 'We're concerned what's going to happen this month.'
Martinson said every time he calls the agency to schedule an appointment, he's on hold for hours, and often times, the phone hangs up.
The Pierce County native walked KIRO 7 News through his experience.
The automated operator told Martinson that he would have to wait more than two hours to speak with a representative, however, he was not given the chance to wait as the phone clicked minutes later.
'To be left in this vague state of affairs... It's very concerning. It's a worry. It's a concern and it scares us,' he said. 'If we need information, we should be able to get that information and bring some stability and assurance back into our life.'
KIRO 7 News spoke with Republican Representative Jim Walsh about the recent federal announcements.
While he believes the agency needs to be better at responding to questions, the state lawmaker said the recent job cuts can improve the government and help more seniors.
'The Social Security Administration has always struggled with good customer service. That's not a new thing,' he said. 'We're hoping that the efforts of DOGE to review the operations of government bureaucracies actually improves things like customer service like communication from a large bureaucracy like the Social Security Administration,' he said.
Walsh added that the job cuts would save millions of dollars, as he believes the agency has more workers than needed.
'The purpose of the exercise is to make large bureaucratic agencies like SSA more efficient, not less efficient,' he said.
But for Donna Well, a leader of Wise Elders Take Action, a Washington grassroots organization that advocates for senior benefits, she believes the changes are taking the country in the wrong direction.
'So upset and so concerned with all the cuts that's happening,' she shared.
'Any cuts to Social Security would affect so many people. Social Security is something we paid into and rely on,' she added. 'Social Security could use more people, as far as I'm concerned. They could be easier to access.'
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Yahoo
a minute ago
- Yahoo
Texas' proposed congressional map dismantles districts flagged by DOJ
In early July, as President Donald Trump was pushing Texas to redraw its congressional map to better favor Republicans, the Department of Justice sent state leaders a letter. Four of Texas' congressional districts were unconstitutional, the department warned. Three, the 9th, 18th and 33rd, were unconstitutional 'coalition districts,' where Black and Hispanic voters combine to form a majority. The 29th, while majority Hispanic, was also unconstitutional, the letter said, because it was created by its two neighbors being coalition districts. 'It is well-established that so-called 'coalition districts' run afoul of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment,' assistant attorney general Harmeet Dhillon wrote, threatening legal action if Texas didn't bring the districts into compliance. On Wednesday, Texas House Republicans released their first draft of a redrawn map designed to give the GOP five new seats in next year's midterms. As for the four districts that troubled Dhillon? In the Houston area, the 9th and the 18th districts, where no one race currently constitutes a majority of eligible voters, would be redrawn as just over half Hispanic and half Black, respectively. But as a result, the nearby 29th District — a fixture of east Houston's Latino community — would lose its Hispanic majority, becoming 43% Hispanic, 33% Black and 18% white. The 33rd District in North Texas, although entirely redrawn, would still have no single racial or ethnic group that constitutes a majority. Texas has long maintained that it drew these maps without an eye toward race. But tinkering with the lines now that these racial concerns have been raised risks triggering a Voting Rights Act complaint, legal experts said. States generally cannot redraw districts based on race without a compelling argument that it's necessary to protect voters' ability to elect their candidates of choice, said Justin Levitt, a redistricting expert at Loyola Law School. 'It sure seems like they have actually done what the DOJ, without any basis, accused them of,' Levitt said, noting that he had not done sufficient analysis to say for sure. Legal experts say the DOJ's interpretation of the law around coalition districts, and thus its legal threats to Texas, are based on faulty logic that could be backing the state into a discrimination lawsuit. 'Nothing in this decision suggests, much less holds, that the VRA prohibits the very existence of coalition districts,' Ellen Katz, a redistricting expert at the University of Michigan Law School, told the House redistricting committee at its first hearing last week. 'There are hundreds of these districts nationwide in which jurisdictions relying on traditional principles create these districts.' Coalition districts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 says states cannot engage in election or voting practices that dilute the electoral power of voters of color, including by packing them into a single district or diffusing them throughout multiple. For decades, courts held that states can satisfy the requirements of Section 2 by creating districts where multiple politically cohesive racial voting groups constitute a majority. Currently, Texas has nine districts where no one racial or ethnic group has a majority; in eight of them, Black, Hispanic and Asian voters combined create a majority. In 2024, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears Texas-based cases, reversed a prior ruling and said coalitions of different racial or ethnic groups within one district cannot claim their rights have been violated under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Citing this ruling, Dhillon told Texas that its coalition districts were 'nothing more than vestiges of an unconstitutionally racially based gerrymandering past, which must be abandoned, and must now be corrected by Texas.' But this reflects a misunderstanding of this case, legal experts say. Under this ruling, the Voting Rights Act can't require states to create coalition districts, but that doesn't mean coalition districts are inherently unconstitutional. 'All it says is that you don't have the affirmative obligation to purposely create [a coalition district] at the outset,' said Mark Gaber, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center who is representing a group of plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit against the current maps. 'It certainly doesn't say, go through the map and eliminate all of the ones you drew.' Texas leaders have contradicted themselves and each other on the question of whether the state has coalition districts and what should be done about them. Gov. Greg Abbott, days after receiving Dhillon's letter, included redistricting on his agenda for the Legislature's special session, citing 'constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.' He later told Dallas' Fox 4 News that redistricting was necessary because of the 5th Circuit's ruling. 'We want to make sure that we have maps that don't impose coalition districts while at the very same time ensuring that we will maximize the ability of Texans to be able to vote for the candidate of their choice,' he said. At a House committee hearing Friday, GOP Rep. David Spiller of Jacksboro asked Rep. Todd Hunter, who carried the 2021 maps in the lower chamber, whether Texas currently has coalition districts. Hunter said 'the law was different then.' 'You had coalition districts being interpreted differently,' he said. 'Today, you have a 2024 5th Circuit case absolutely changing the law.' But in court, Texas has long argued it has not drawn coalition districts to address racial disparities, because it draws 'race blind' maps. Attorney General Ken Paxton doubled down on this argument in response to the Dhillon letter. 'The Texas Legislature has led the Nation in rejecting race-based decision-making in its redistricting process — it has drawn its current maps in conformance with traditional, non-racial redistricting criteria to ensure Texas continues to adopt policies that will truly Make America Great Again,' Paxton wrote. At the request of Democrats, the House and Senate redistricting committees have invited Dhillon to testify on the letter and her allegations against Texas, but neither she nor any representative from the DOJ has responded to the request. The Senate panel this week voted not to subpoena her. What happened to the Houston DOJ districts Three of the districts Dhillon cited in her letter are neighbors in the Houston area. All three would be radically redrawn by the House's proposed map. The 9th Congressional District is a multiracial district made up of 45% Black voters, 25% Hispanic voters, 18% white voters and 9% Asian voters. The district, which covers parts of southwest Houston and outlying suburbs, voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 by 44 points, and has reliably reelected Democratic Rep. Al Green since 2004. Under the House's proposed map, the 9th District has been redrawn around an entirely new part of Houston, retaining just 2% of Green's current district and scooping up conservative swaths of east Harris County. The Hispanic population would climb to just over 50% and the white population would almost double to 34%. Black voters would drop to 12% and Asian voters to 2%. In 2024, this new district would have voted for Trump by 15 points. Green, who is essentially drawn out of his district, condemned the proposal as racist, saying 'the DOJ demanded that the race card be played, and the governor dealt the people of Texas a racist hand.' Republicans pointed to the changing preferences of Latino voters, who swung sharply for Trump and other GOP candidates in 2024, to defend these new lines. 'Each of these newly-drawn districts now trend Republican in political performance,' Hunter said. 'it does allow Republican candidates the opportunity to compete in these districts.' Some of Green's existing district has been pushed into the newly drawn 18th Congressional District. While this was previously a seat with no single racial majority, its electorate would become 50.8% Black, while cutting the Hispanic and white populations. It would also tilt even further to the left; Harris carried the district by 40 percentage points in 2024 and would have won it by a 54-point spread under the new lines. Next door, Rep. Sylvia Garcia's 29th Congressional District would also be reconfigured, with Hispanic residents making up 43% of its new eligible voting population — down 20 percentage points from the current makeup. The district's Black and white populations would increase to create a district without a single racial group dominating. It would become more strongly Democratic. In challenging Texas' maps, plaintiffs have contended that Houston's population justifies two majority Hispanic districts. Instead, the one strong majority Hispanic district has been eliminated, and replaced with a district that is almost exactly half Hispanic, alongside one that is almost exactly half Black. '50.5% is unlikely to perform for Latino preferred candidates, or Black preferred candidates,' Gaber said. 'And they know that. It's a mirage.' What happened to the North Texas DOJ district In her letter, Dhillon also said the 33rd Congressional District ran afoul of the Constitution through its coalition status. The district is currently anchored in Fort Worth, with an electorate that is 44% Hispanic, 25% Black, 23% white and 6% Asian. The district went for Harris by 34 percentage points and has consistently reelected Rep. Marc Veasey, a Black Democrat. A decade ago, Texas, and the federal courts, asserted that the 33rd was not a coalition district. 'District 33 is not a 'minority coalition opportunity district' in which two different minority groups 'band together' to form an electoral majority,' the state and plaintiffs said in a joint advisory to the court. A district court judge agreed, saying it was 'not intentionally drawn as a minority coalition district.' The revised 33rd Congressional District maintains about a third of Veasey's old district, moving out of his Fort Worth base. The proposed new lines would reduce the Hispanic and Black population and increase the white population, while maintaining about the same Democratic lean. Just like in the current map, the proposed 33rd district does not have a single racial group that dominates. Legal experts say that is not inherently a problem, despite what the DOJ letter alleged, as long as voters of color have sufficient power to elect their candidate of choice. At a House committee hearing last week, Nina Perales, the vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the groups suing over Texas' current maps, testified that the Dallas-Fort Worth area, like Houston, should have an additional Hispanic-majority district on top of Veasey's Hispanic-plurality seat. 'In light of the growth of the population over the past two decades, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does require the creation of additional districts,' Perales said. 'If the committee and the legislature decides to take up redistricting, it is certainly true that you cannot subtract from the current level of representation that we have.' Few districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area went without major changes in the new draft map. In the reshaped downtown Dallas district of Rep. Jasmine Crockett, 50.2% of the voting population would be Black, not unlike the two new Houston districts to inch just past the majority threshold. If Hispanic or Black voters were electing their candidate of choice, there is no legal reason to move more voters of one group into the district to hit a perfunctory benchmark of 50%, Levitt said. 'It tells me you're trying really hard to hit a particular target, such that the target itself was the predominant reason for moving people in or out of the district,' Levitt said. 'That's exactly what the courts have said you can't do.' The lineup for The Texas Tribune Festival continues to grow! Be there when all-star leaders, innovators and newsmakers take the stage in downtown Austin, Nov. 13–15. The newest additions include comedian, actor and writer John Mulaney; Dallas mayor Eric Johnson; U.S. Sen. 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Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, is moved to minimum-security women's prison in Texas
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Newsweek
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New Poll Shows Top 2028 Presidential Candidates in Swing State
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A new poll by Emerson College Polling released on Friday shows potential 2028 Republican and Democratic presidential contenders picked by North Carolina primary voters. Why It Matters Early polls in crucial swing states like North Carolina have gained significance as potential contenders for the 2028 presidential election begin to emerge. Even with the election still a few years away, polling can offer insight into candidate viability, voter sentiment, and evolving party dynamics, particularly after the pivotal 2024 election cycle. North Carolina, often considered determinative in recent presidential contests, could offer a bellwether for national trends as both major parties consider their direction and platform for 2028. What To Know In the Emerson College survey conducted from July 28 to 30, of 1,000 North Carolina registered voters, Vice President JD Vance is leading the Republican nomination with 53 percent among likely Republican primary voters—well ahead of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with 7 percent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio with 5 percent. Vance jumped 7 points from a previous survey taken in June by Emerson. In the Democratic field, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was the top choice among likely primary voters at 17 percent, followed by former Vice President Kamala Harris at 12 percent and California Governor Gavin Newsom at 10 percent. The survey shows 24 percent are undecided. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, with separate credibility intervals for primary subgroups. Harris, meanwhile, announced this week that she is not running for California governor in the next cycle, fueling speculation she is considering another presidential run. In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Thursday, the former vice president said she thinks the political system is "broken" and does not want to be in it right now. She added she would always "be part of the fight" though. Friday's poll also shows that 40 percent of the swing state voters say their family's finances are worse off than one year prior, 32 percent say they are about the same and 28 percent say they are better off now. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and then Vice President-elect, JD Vance can be seen departing the White House ahead of the Inauguration of then President-elect Donald Trump on January 20 in Washington, D.C. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and then Vice President-elect, JD Vance can be seen departing the White House ahead of the Inauguration of then President-elect Donald Trump on January 20 in Washington, D.C. Photo byWhat People Are Saying Political science professor at Columbia University Robert Y. Shapiro to Newsweek via email Friday: "The Democratic primary polling is much too early and all we are seeing is name recognition for past presidential candidates and ones in the news lately in a visible way. On the Republican side, DeSantis and Rubio are damaged goods as past losers in the past Republican primaries in 2016 and 2024. Vance is on the rise by virtue of being Vice President and visible when he echoes or advocates more strongly Trump's MAGA positions and what Trump—and he—have done. He has not been defeated in any past major election so untarnished in that respect." What Happens Next Major candidates are not expected to announce their 2028 campaigns until after the 2026 midterm elections, in keeping with recent electoral cycles. However, the field of likely contenders is potentially taking shape as politicians such as Buttigieg, Newsom, and others make public appearances and pursue national media opportunities. Vance's strong polling position places him at the forefront of Republican prospects.
