Trump Toady Briefly Canceled a Program Handing Social Security Numbers to Newborns in a Hospital to Spite Maine's Governor

Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek just admitted to canceling a program to enroll newborns at a Maine hospital in fit of pique at the state governor standing up to Donald Trump.

This is a single detail buried in a much longer New York Times article:

[T]he Social Security Administration briefly ended a contract that had allowed parents of newborn babies in Maine to sign their children up for a Social Security number at the hospital, instead requiring them to do so in person at an office. Mr. Dudek said he had ordered the move after watching Janet Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, clash with Mr. Trump at the White House. He quickly reversed that decision, as well as another to end electronic death reporting in the state.

“I was ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president,” Mr. Dudek said in the interview. “I screwed up. I’ll admit I screwed up.”

This was temporary, and Dudek admitted it was wrong. But it’s the sort of thing, taken in the larger context, that will warn other political leaders that if they’re not “real cordial to the president,” they—and their hapless constituents—risk the wrath of his toadying subordinates.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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