The walls of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which lies blocks from the US Capitol, are decorated with stunning New Deal-era murals. The most famous of these murals, "The Meaning of Social Security," depicts life before and after Social Security. The mural shows the best of America, what we can do when we all come together to build our Social Security system. Thanks to Donald Trump, "The Meaning of Social Security"—along with everything it represents—is now in grave danger.

The Trump administration is making moves to demolish the Wilbur J. Cohen Building, inevitably destroying "The Meaning of Social Security" in the process. Trump plans to take a wrecking ball to this key piece of Social Security’s history, just as he did to the east wing of the White House. But this is about more than just a mural. Trump spent 2025 doing everything in his power to demolish our invaluable Social Security system itself.

Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security. Not surprisingly given his past history, he betrayed that promise over and over again in 2025.

Notably, Trump chose Russell Vought to be his powerful head of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought, the lead architect of Project 2025, made the Trump administration’s agenda plain, infamously declaring: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work…”

The very sense of security that lifted us out of the Great Depression is what Trump is destroying—and he wants to erase the memory that another way is possible.

True to that goal, Trump and Vought gave Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) unprecedented power over the federal government, including Social Security. Musk and his underlings used that power to:

In short, Trump, Vought, and Musk spent 2025 creating chaos, havoc, and trauma for the hardworking employees of the Social Security Administration, which translates to vastly diminished service to the public.

Elon Musk is no longer officially in government, but Vought still is, and Musk’s DOGE minions can still be found at SSA. Moreover, Trump’s choice to lead Social Security is Frank Bisignano, a self-described “DOGE person.” Though Bisignano has no background in Social Security, he does have expertise in hollowing out companies.

Before running Social Security, Bisignano was the head of Fiserv, a financial services company, where he laid off thousands of workers. Fiserv’s stock recently

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