March 26 2025
City-specific newsletter sign-up; Social Security customer service; Vance to visit Greenland; Trump restricts China tech; US missile system counters China
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Social Security Website Crashes, Phones Backup Amid Cost-Cutting
JD Vance To Visit Greenland
Trump Targets Chinese Tech with Tougher Blacklist Rules
New U.S. Missile System Deployed in Philippines To Counter China
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Social Security Website Crashes, Phones Backup Amid Cost-Cutting
The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones in place of receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. Amid all this, the agency no longer has a system to monitor customer experience because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk. And the phones keep ringing. And ringing. The federal agency that delivers $1.5 trillion a year in earned benefits to 73 million retired workers, their survivors, and poor and disabled Americans is engulfed in crisis — further undermining the already struggling organization’s ability to provide reliable and quick service to vulnerable customers, according to internal documents and more than two dozen current and former agency employees and officials, customers and others who interact with Social Security.
Source: Washington Post
JD Vance To Visit Greenland
The Trump administration seems like it just doubled down on Greenland. Vice President JD Vance announced on Tuesday that he was headed to the island later this week, taking over a controversial visit that officials in Greenland have made very clear they don’t want at all. Originally, the Trump administration said that Usha Vance, the second lady, and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, would make the trip to Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark that President Trump wants for the United States. Officials from Denmark and Greenland immediately branded the move “aggressive” and part of the president’s plan to get the island, as he recently put it, “one way or the other.” The White House then issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon changing up the visit. The new itinerary is for Mr. and Ms. Vance to visit Pituffik Space Base, an American military installation high above the Arctic Circle, “to receive a briefing on Arctic security issues and meet with U.S. service members.”
Source: NYT
Trump Targets Chinese Tech with Tougher Blacklist Rules
The Trump administration demonstrated that it wants tougher limits on China’s access to American technology than those introduced by the Biden administration, targeting Chinese companies including a server maker that buys Nvidia chips. The U.S. on Tuesday added dozens of Chinese companies to a trade blacklist over national security concerns. American businesses seeking to sell technology to these companies will need approval from the government. Among those added were subsidiaries of Inspur Group, China’s largest server maker and a major customer for U.S. chip makers such as Nvidia, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Companies linked to China’s largest supercomputer maker, Sugon, were also added. The move is the clearest signal yet that the Trump administration intends to further limit what kind of American technology Chinese companies can buy, despite complaints from Silicon Valley companies, including Nvidia, that former President Joe Biden already went too far. In the Biden administration’s final days, it imposed limits on third countries buying cutting-edge American chips, hoping to prevent those chips from making their way to China. U.S. tech executives have asked President Trump to roll back those limits before they take effect in May.
Source: WSJ
New U.S. Missile System Deployed in Philippines To Counter China
A new U.S. missile system deployed in the Philippines puts key Chinese military and commercial hubs within striking distance and hands President Trump an early test of his commitment to deterring Chinese aggression against American allies in Asia. Last year, the U.S. Army moved the Typhon Missile System, which can fire missiles as far as 1,200 miles, to a base on Luzon Island in the northern Philippines. It is the first time since the Cold War that the U.S. military has deployed a land-based launching system with such a long range outside its borders. The Typhon, military experts say, is part of a broader strategic repositioning by the American military as it seeks to counter Beijing’s huge buildup of intermediate- and long-range missiles in the Pacific. In the event of a conflict with China, land-based missile systems such as the Typhon could be central to defending key U.S. allies such as the Philippines, which has clashed with China over Beijing’s claims to nearly all of the South China Sea, and Taiwan, which Beijing has threatened to take, by force if necessary. The Chinese government has responded to the Typhon’s deployment with alarm, rebuking the U.S. and the Philippines for fueling what it called an arms race.
Source: WSJ
March 26, 1812: A cartoon titled “The Gerry-Mander” in the Boston Gazette introduces the term “gerrymandering.” It refers to Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who signed into law oddly shaped district boundaries to help the incumbent party.
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Sources
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/25/social-security-phones-doge-cuts/ (Washington Post)
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/world/americas/jd-vance-greenland-visit.html (NYT)
- https://www.wsj.com/tech/trump-takes-tough-new-approach-to-choking-off-chinas-access-to-u-s-tech-973f594a?mod=hp_lead_pos6 (WSJ)
- https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/china-us-typhon-weapons-system-missile-philippines-100fd852?mod=hp_lead_pos10 (WSJ)