March 31, 2025

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

DOGE, Musk Find 5.5 Million Non-Citizens With Social Security Numbers, 1.13 Million On Medicaid, Many Registered To Vote As Trump Issues Election Integrity Executive Order 

By Robert Romano 

At a town hall question and answer with Elon Musk in Green Bay, Wis. on March 30 on behalf of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) revealed that since 2021, 5.5 million non-citizens have been given Social Security numbers. 

Of those, DOGE has already identified 1.3 million who are collecting Medicaid, a $567 billion a year program to about 79.3 million people at about $7,100 per person collecting, an apparent waste of about $8 billion a year.  

According to DOGE’s Antonio Gracias, “We've gone through on every benefit program… We found groups from this particular group of people, this 5.5 million people, in those benefit programs.” 

But it’s not just non-citizens collecting public benefits. Gracias added, “And then what was really, really disturbing us was why? We're asking ourselves why. And, so we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records and we found people here registered to vote in this population. Yes. And, who did vote and … we found some by sampling that actually did vote and we have referred them to prosecution at the Homeland Security Investigation Service.” 

Generally, most Americans have to prove they are citizens to get a Social Security numbers when filling out form SS-5. The exception has been if you are working here lawfully. The Dec. 2024 version of the Social Security number application’s instructions state “To apply for an original card, you must provide at least two documents to prove age, identity, and U.S. citizenship or current lawful, work-authorized immigration status. If you are not a U.S. citizen and do not have DHS work authorization, you must prove you have a valid non-work reason for requesting a card.”  

So, legal aliens get Social Security numbers, too.  

And under the administration of former President Joe Biden, the Social Security numbers were also being issued to supposed asylum seekers who, generally, came here illegally. Per Gracias, “once you're in the country and you got asylum through one of these pathways — and we've mapped the whole thing out — you can apply for a work document. You file a 765. It's the work form. You get this form called the 766. That's the authorization. And then Social Security Administration automatically send you in the mail your Social Security number. No interview. No ID.” 

There’s just one problem.  

States very much depend on the integrity of the Social Security database under the Help America Vote Act via Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) to verify eligibility to register to vote in U.S. elections, which is reserved to citizens.  

In 2024 alone, the HAVV database was queried 16.2 million times, resulting in 3 million non-matches and another 168,854 matches for dead people.  

And that was before the Social Security Administration just purged 20 million deceased persons from the Social Security database who were still marked as alive.  

The implication is that states certainly need to re-run their voter registration databases against the Social Security HAVV database to remove the deceased.  

But the sheer amount of Social Security numbers being issued to aliens — 5.5 million in just the past four years — whether legal or not, exposes another critical flaw to the U.S. voting franchise.  

Currently, the HAVV system only purges deceased from the voter rolls but does not consider non-citizens. Outlining the long-term danger this poses to the nation’s two-party system, Musk noted at the Wisconsin town hall, “the problem with this obviously is that if you turn the swing states… blue then there are no swing states and then we're in a permanent… one-party system. And as soon as they win that, they'll have the House, the Senate, the Presidency, they'll pack the Supreme Court, then they'll … double down on… the illegals just like California.” 

That, despite the fact that under 18 U.S. Code § 611, it is illegal for any alien, legal or illegal, to vote in elections. That could carry a maximum of one year in prison. 

It is also illegal under 18 U.S. Code § 1015 to for any alien, legal or illegal, to register to vote: “Whoever knowingly makes any false statement or claim that he is a citizen of the United States in order to register to vote or to vote in any Federal, State, or local election (including an initiative, recall, or referendum) — shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” 

Now, a new March 25 executive order by President Donald Trump, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” will finally begin to enforce those federal laws barring non-citizens from voting.  

It directs the Election Assistance Commission to “take appropriate action to require, in its national mail voter registration form issued under 52 U.S.C. 20508 … documentary proof of United States citizenship, consistent with 52 U.S.C. 20508(b)(3)…” 

And Attorney General Pam Bondi to “prioritize enforcement of 18 U.S.C. 611 and 1015(f) and similar laws that restrict non-citizens from registering to vote or voting, including through use of … databases or information maintained by the Department of Homeland Security; … State-issued identification records and driver license databases; and … similar records relating to citizenship.” 

The order also requires Bondi to work with states to purge their records, too, of unqualified voters: “The Attorney General shall, consistent with applicable laws, coordinate with State attorneys general to assist with State-level review and prosecution of aliens unlawfully registered to vote or casting votes.” 

That will include the deceased who may still be on the voter rolls, per the order, “To assist States in determining whether individuals are eligible to register and vote… The Commissioner of Social Security shall take all appropriate action to make available the Social Security Number Verification Service, the Death Master File, and any other Federal databases containing relevant information to all State and local election officials engaged in verifying the eligibility of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered.  In determining and taking such action, the Commissioner of Social Security shall ensure compliance with applicable privacy and data security laws and regulations.” 

It also orders that “The Attorney General shall take appropriate action with respect to States that fail to comply with the list maintenance requirements of the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.” This is squarely laid at sanctuary states, counties and cities that have sought to skirt federal immigration laws by harboring illegal aliens.  

The Help America Vote Act requires every state to maintain a computerized statewide voter registration list and make reasonable efforts to purge those lists of ineligible voters, but the only two criteria it lists for removal are if the person dies, or he or she moves out of the state.  

So, what about the non-citizens? And what of the states that refuse to purge non-citizens? 

Well, it is already illegal for non-citizens to either vote or register to vote as note above. And under 18 U.S. Code § 371 it is illegal for two or more persons to conspire to break any federal law.  

Could that be the “appropriate action” President Trump is directing Attorney General Bondi to take under the order? For states, counties and cities, it might be better to not find out and to instead just purge the voter rolls and public benefits of ineligible persons. This is developing quickly. Stay tuned. 

Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.  

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/03/doge-musk-find-5-5-million-non-citizens-with-social-security-numbers-1-13-million-on-medicaid-many-registered-to-vote-as-trump-issues-election-integrity-executive-order/ 

Moderate Hispanics, Young Men, and TikTok – Surprising Takeaways From a Democratic Pollster on Why Trump Won    

By Manzanita Miller  

In a recent New York Times deep dive, David Shor, a data scientist from the Democratic-leaning consulting firm Blue Rose Research, just dropped some hard-hitting facts about the 2024 election and why Democrats lost.   

Shor’s analysis – backed by his firm’s autopsy of voter shifts during the last election – validate many of the longstanding demographic shifts Americans for Limited Government Foundation has warned about among young, minority, and independent voters.     

For many Democrats, Harris’ crushing loss in 2024 was inexplicable. As Ezra Klein noted, “I’ve been spending some time recently with top Democrats as they think about how to rebuild after the 2024 loss. And in the 20-some years I’ve been covering politics, I have never heard Democrats so confused: about who they are — aside from their opposition to Donald Trump — as well as how and why they lost.” 

Shor’s firm is still crunching the data, but they do have 26 million survey respondents from 8 million people combined with election results at the county and precinct-level that have begun to paint a picture of what went wrong for Democrats in 2024.    

The largest takeaway from Shor’s research – which is a finding Americans for Limited Government Foundation has been hammering home for years – is that a great number of new Trump supporters have come from outside the typical GOP tent.   

Young voters – especially men – moderate Hispanics and Blacks, and voters who skip the nightly news and get their information from decentralized sources contributed significantly to President Donald Trump’s win in 2024.      

Shor’s data shows that white voters didn’t form the bulk of the swing toward Trump – they largely supported him in 2016 and 2024 alike. The shift between elections was most pronounced among minority voters who are becoming a part of Trump’s coalition.  

Shor’s numbers speak for themselves, paining a deep deficit for Democrats among moderate minority voters. Democrats experienced a staggering twenty-three-point decline in support from moderate Hispanics between the 2016 election and the 2024 election. While Shor estimates that in 2016 Hillary Clinton won a sweeping 81 percent of moderate Hispanic voters, Biden won just 70 percent, and Harris clocked in at a meager 58 percent among moderate Hispanics.    

Shor’s data shows an eight-point decline among even liberal Hispanic voters for Democrats between 2016 and 2020, and a seventeen-point decline for Democrats among conservative Hispanics. But as the data indicates, the largest decline for Democrats occurred among moderate Hispanics.   

While the decline for Democrats among moderate and conservative Black voters was less pronounced than the plummeting Hispanic numbers, those groups shifted away from Democrats too. Shor estimates that Democrats suffered a three-point decline among moderate black voters and an eight-point decline among conservative Black voters between 2016 and 2024. Moderate Asian voters shifted eleven points away from Democrats, and conservative Asians shifted eight points away from Democrats. 

This steep decline for Democrats – especially Hispanic moderates – shatters the left-wing narrative that Trump appeals broadly to “racist” whites. As Shor stated in interpreting his firm’s data, “the main story here is just a continuation of the trends that we saw four years ago. Throughout the entire Trump campaign, we’ve observed this racial depolarization”.  

So, racial depolarization was a large piece of the puzzle or put another way – minorities saw value to Trump’s working-class America First message and responded accordingly to elect him.   

Another takeaway from Shor’s data is related to the youth vote, which we know President Trump made great strides with between 2020 and 2024. While the gender gap for voters over age 40 is relatively stable and consistent, with Democrats earning around ten percentage points higher support from women than from men, the gender gap for young voters swells to nearly twenty percentage points, according to Shor’s research. In commentary Shor stated that the gender gap has exploded among Gen Z. “Eighteen-year-old men were 23 percentage points more likely to support Donald Trump than 18-year-old women, which is just completely unprecedented in American politics”, Shor stated.   

Interestingly, Shor’s data also shows that Americans who tend to get their news from TikTok – a group which skews younger and less politically engaged than those who get their news from Broadcast TV or other online hubs – were more likely to swing toward Trump between 2020 and 2024. Users who singled out TikTok as their main source of news swung nearly six points away from Democrats between 2020 and 2024, according to Shor’s data.     

The political parties are shifting and realigning based on modern principles – and a great many young and minority voters see the new populist coalition within the Republican Party as a safer home for independent thought, America First values, and building a robust middle-class. The increasingly out-of-touch Democratic Party is further isolating itself from moderates, minorities, and younger voters, a trend that once set in motion will be very difficult to reverse.      

Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.  

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/03/moderate-hispanics-young-men-and-tiktok-surprising-takeaways-from-a-democratic-pollster-on-why-trump-won/