I just wanted to drop this in here because it’s an important set of facts that I suspect will be a big issue both in the coming GOP primary and — if DeSantis gets the GOP nomination — during the 2024 general election.

A week ago I noted that, contrary to press claims that only a few GOP outliers have called for cutting or phasing out Social Security, the great majority of House Republicans had already endorsed doing so during this fiscal year. There’s a lot of press special pleading surrounding proposals for Social Security cuts: It’s only Rick Scott or Ron Johnson or Mike Lee. In fact, such proposals are GOP orthodoxy and have been for decades. The Republican Study Committee, which is a caucus including about three-quarters of House Republicans, endorsed a proposed budget for this fiscal year calling for Social Security privatization, benefit cuts (through changed COLA formulas), raising the retirement age to 70 and more.

Amidst all the storm and drama I’ve been enjoying learning more about just how the current crop of AI applications (LLMs, or Large Language Models) operate. I don’t want to imply that I understand them at a deep level — my programming career peaked with some piecework programming in Visual Basic that I did in grad school. (Actually, there was also that extremely elegant bubble sort program I wrote in middle school. But I digress …) But it has at least given me some sense of the roots of the limitations that are coming to the fore. Specifically — but not only — the way applications like ChatGPT frequently fabricate false claims clothed in the trappings of facticity. I’m not just claiming this new protein structure exists. I’m citing the specific journal article with the page numbers and date and authors, etc. It’s got to be true!

To the great distress of many MAGA Republicans, President Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv early this morning (U.S. time). Here are some of the most striking images.

I’ve had questions from a number of you about why there’s been so little mainstream media pick up of Seymour Hersh’s claim that the U.S. destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline last year. As a factual matter, I think it’s highly unlikely that this is true. But my point here isn’t to dispute the report. People know that Hersh is one of the most high profile and celebrated investigative reporters of the last half century. So how is it he’s suddenly seen as an unreliable source of information?

On this point I think I can shed some light.

The White House has congratulated Rick Scott for confessing his desire to destroy Social Security and seeking forgiveness.

On Wednesday we did a TPM Inside Briefing with economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman. I already shared with you the portion of the discussion in which we talked about Democrats’ options for extraordinary/heroic measures to avert a U.S. credit default if House Republicans force the issue. But we covered a lot of other important ground directly relevant to the biggest news stories of the day — the financial viability of Social Security (and Medicare) and the sustainability of the aggregate federal debt in particular.

A substantial percentage of the U.S. federal debt (about a quarter of it) has been run up in just the last three years — largely in response to the COVID pandemic crisis. Is the scale of the federal debt sustainable? Does it require drastic action? Krugman’s answer was basically, no. There’s no crisis. Despite what you hear, it’s not unsustainable at all.

On Social Security, same thing. At some point in the future — probably about a dozen years from now — Social Security will need more revenue to cover all the benefits of the people currently in retirement under Social Security. At that point, we’ll have a simple decision on whether to raise taxes to cover those benefits or cut the benefits. It’s not really an economics decision. Both are totally doable in macro-economic terms. It’s really a values and politics question. Which is more important? Preserving the benefits of retirement beneficiaries (and others covered by Social Security) or preventing higher taxes on upper-income earners? You don’t need to be a PhD economist to decide this question.

Critically, does the problem get worse the longer we put off these decisions? Again, no. All the claims to the contrary are a kind of bums’ rush to force one of the answers over the other — cuts as opposed to taxes.

All these questions and answers about debt, Social Security, Medicare, and the debt ceiling were highly clarifying for me. And I suspect they will be for you as well. If you’re a member, join me after the jump for the full TPM Inside Briefing with Paul Krugman.

I had heard a bit about this in discussions of inaccurate information from AI engines like ChatGPT. But hearing it directly from TPM Readers AT (a research librarian) and JC brought it into sharper relief for me. Inaccurate information can mean a lot of things. You can say Thomas Jefferson died in 1846 when in fact he died in 1826. Other inaccuracies are more complex and pernicious.

Not quite in Santos territory. But close. Local NewsChannel 5 in Nashville has the goods on freshman Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) who turns out not to be an economist, a cop, a CEO, or an international sex trafficking expert or seemingly have any of his degrees.

The Washington Post obtained a copy of a new bankruptcy filing that reveals some bizarre information about conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ personal finances, but this nugget takes the cake.

In the disclosures, which you can read in full here, Jones declared that he is “holding firearms” for some of the people who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the White House’s aggression in calling out Republicans’ plans to cut Medicare and Social Security, and how much the political dynamics have changed.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.