More than 3.2 million Social Security recipients who received pensions from their time as teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public service jobs will soon see a boost in their benefits. Most people will receive their one-time retroactive payment by the end of March, and new monthly payments will begin in April, the agency says.
The Social Security Administration announced it would immediately begin processing retroactive payments and will send increased monthly payments to people affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset, which were rescinded in the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act that former President Joe Biden signed into law last year.
The Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset limited Social Security benefits for recipients if they got retirement payments from other sources, including public retirement programs from a state or local government.
Advocates say the Social Security Fairness Act rights a decades-old disparity, though it also puts a strain on Social Security Trust Funds, which face a looming insolvency crisis.
The annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report released last May said the program’s trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2035. The new law will hasten the program’s insolvency date by about half a year.
“Social Security’s aggressive schedule to start issuing retroactive payments in February and increase monthly benefit payments beginning in April supports President Trump’s priority to implement the Social Security Fairness Act as quickly as possible,” said Lee Dudek, acting commissioner of Social Security in a statement. “The American people deserve to get their due benefits as quickly as possible.”
Beneficiaries from the new law include teachers, firefighters, and police officers across the country and people whose work had been covered by a foreign social security system.
Most people will receive their one-time retroactive payment by the end of March, and new monthly payments will begin in April, which will be deposited into their bank account on record with Social Security, according to a statement from the Social Security Administration.
The Congressional Research Service estimated that in December 2023, there were 745,679 people, about 1% of all Social Security beneficiaries, who had their benefits reduced by the Government Pension Offset. About 2.1 million people, or about 3% of all beneficiaries, were affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision.
SSA asks beneficiaries to wait until April to inquire about the status of their retroactive payment since some payments will be processed incrementally into March.
The future of Social Security has become a top political issue and was a major point of contention in the 2024 election. About 72.5 million people, including retirees, disabled people, and children, receive Social Security benefits.
President Donald Trump said Monday that his tariffs on Canada and Mexico are starting next month, ending a monthlong suspension on the planned import taxes that could potentially hurt economic growth and worsen inflation.
“We’re on time with the tariffs, and it seems like that’s moving along very rapidly,” the U.S. president said at a White House news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.
While Trump was answering a specific question about the taxes to be charged on America’s two largest trading partners, the U.S. president also stressed more broadly that his intended “reciprocal” tariffs were on schedule to begin as soon as April.
“The tariffs are going forward on time, on schedule,” Trump said.
Trump has claimed that other countries charge unfair import taxes that have come at the expense of domestic manufacturing and jobs. His near-constant threats of tariffs have already raised concerns among businesses and consumers about an economic slowdown and accelerating inflation. But Trump claims that the import taxes would ultimately generate revenues to reduce the federal budget deficit and new jobs for workers.
“Our country will be extremely liquid and rich again,” Trump said.
In an interview on the Fox News show “Special Report” late Monday, Macron said he hoped he had convinced Trump to avoid a possible trade war, noting the difficulty of taking on a traditional ally such as Europe while simultaneously using tariffs to challenge China’s industrial might.
“We don’t need a trade war,” Marcon said. “We need more prosperity together.”
Most economists say the cost of the taxes could largely be borne by consumers, retailers, and manufacturers such as auto companies that source globally and rely on raw materials such as steel and aluminum that Trump is already, separately, tariffing at 25%.
Still, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum appeared confident Monday that her administration would reach agreements with the U.S. government before the deadline set by Trump.
“We would need to be reaching important agreements this Friday,” Sheinbaum told reporters Monday morning before Trump’s remarks. “On all of the issues there is communication and what we need is to complete this agreement, I believe we’re in a place to do it.”
If necessary, she said she would seek to speak directly with Trump again. In high-level discussions between both governments, Mexico has insisted that the U.S. also take a hard look at the drug distribution and consumption in its own country rather than pointing only at production in Mexico, Sheinbaum said.
Companies like Walmart have warned about uncertainty, while the University of Michigan’s latest consumer sentiment index plunged by roughly 10% over the past month in part due to fears about tariffs and inflation worsening. In the 2024 presidential election, voters backed Trump on the belief that he could cool inflation that had spiked to a four-decade high in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic during President Joe Biden’s time in office.
But Trump has persistently threatened tariffs and kept up those calls even as Macron, standing beside him, had previously suggested that talks on trade had produced some common ground.
“We want to make a sincere commitment towards a fair competition where we have smooth trade and more investments,” Macron said at the news conference, according to a translation of his French remarks.
Macron said the idea is to help the U.S. and Europe both prosper, saying that further talks would be carried out by their respective teams to flesh out their ideas.
Investors, businesses, and the broader public are still trying to determine whether Trump is merely threatening tariffs as a negotiating tool or if he sincerely backs the tax hikes as a way to offset his planned income tax cuts.
Despite talks the Trump administration has held with Canadian and Mexican officials, the U.S. president signaled Monday that he would end the 30-day suspension of tariffs that were initially set to take effect in February. Trump plans to tax imports from Mexico at 25% as well as most goods from Canada, with energy products such as Canadian oil and electricity being tariffed at a lower 10%.
Trump is placing tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods with the stated goal of pressuring them to do more to address illegal immigration and the smuggling of illicit drugs such as fentanyl. While relatively little fentanyl comes from Canada, the country announced a czar to address the issue and appease Trump in addition to existing measures. Mexico has relocated 10,000 members of its National Guard to the border with the United States in addition to existing measures.
Trump also plans to impose new tariffs to match the rates charged by other countries. Set to begin as soon as April, the tariffs could be higher than what other countries would charge as subsidies, regulatory barriers, and the value-added tax — which is akin to a sales tax common in Europe — would be included in the calculations.
The possibility of retaliatory tariffs planned by Canada, Mexico, and Europe could lead to a broader trade conflict that sabotages growth. In February, the Yale University Budget Lab estimated that the Canadian and Mexican tariffs could depress average U.S. incomes by $1,170 to $1,245 a year.
A satellite company owned by Elon Musk has the inside track to potentially take over a large federal contract to modernize the nation’s air traffic communications system.
Equipment from Musk’s Starlink has been installed in Federal Aviation Administration facilities as a prelude to a takeover of a $2 billion contract held by Verizon, according to government employees, contractors, and people familiar with the work.
Musk said that the network used by air traffic controllers is aging and requires drastic and quick action to modernize it.
“The Verizon system is not working and so is putting air travelers at serious risk,” Musk on Monday posted on X, the social media site he has owned since 2022.
The emergence of Starlink as a potential replacement for the Verizon-led effort underscores the extraordinary conflicts of interest inherent in Musk’s position as both a senior White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a business mogul in charge of a sprawling array of companies. It is not clear what role Musk might be playing in helping Starlink's parent company SpaceX win such business.
“There’s very limited transparency,” said Jessica Tillipman, a contracting law expert at George Washington University. Referring to Musk, she said: “Without that transparency, we have no idea how much non-public information he has access to or what role he’s playing in what contracts are being awarded.”
Former FAA officials also told The Associated Press that they were alarmed at the prospect of Starlink being used as a critical part of the nation’s aviation system without adequate testing, review, and debate about its benefits and drawbacks.
SpaceX is angling to use its constellation of satellites to replace an aging ground-based communications system that facilitates the FAA’s text and voice communication, the sources said. The Verizon contract, awarded in 2023, was to update part of that system to a more modern standard relying on fiber optic cables.
Contracting records show that nearly $200 million in work has already been done on Verizon’s 15-year modernization effort to update the FAA’s communications system. A Verizon representative said the company is unaware that the contract is being amended or terminated.
The FAA announced on X on Monday that the agency is testing a Starlink terminal at its facility in Atlantic City and two terminals at “non-safety critical sites” in Alaska. Terminals are ground-based receivers that connect devices or computers to orbiting satellites.
Another FAA contractor, L3 Harris, confirmed it was responsible for acquiring and testing Starlink terminals for incorporation into the FAA’s telecommunications infrastructure network. An L3 Harris spokesperson said the company has been working with SpaceX on the initiative for many months.
Bloomberg News reported earlier about the FAA installing Starlink terminals at its facilities.
Details about SpaceX employees deployed to work on the project are unclear, but three of its software developers appeared on a Trump administration list of government workers given “ethics waivers” to do work that could benefit Musk’s company.
Government ethics laws require that people who could profit from government work either recuse themselves from specific projects or first sell their financial holdings or sever ties with the company that could benefit. Waivers can be granted by the heads of government departments or other officials, but only in limited circumstances.
Ted Malaska, a senior director of application software at SpaceX, got a waiver along with two software engineers, Brady Glantz, and Thomas Kiernan, according to the waiver list and LinkedIn profiles. The AP could not determine if the three are still working for SpaceX or the precise nature of their work for the federal government.
Malaska posted on social media on Thursday that he had been meeting at FAA headquarters with officials responsible for the implementation of the telecommunications modernization.
The FAA contract is not Musk’s only conflict. His acolytes have also taken over many of the operations at the General Services Administration, which controls real estate and contracting for numerous government agencies. GSA currently offers other agencies the ability to launch payloads through an existing SpaceX contract —- putting the agency in a position to direct business toward Musk. The Department of Transportation regulates aspects of SpaceX and its electric car company Tesla. NASA and the Department of Defense are major customers of SpaceX. His brain-computer interface company Neuralink has regulatory issues in front of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.