The Daily Moth 2-18-2025

It is Tuesday, February 18, 2025. Here are today’s top stories.

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Update on Delta plane flipping over

Here are updates on the Delta plane that crash-landed and flipped yesterday afternoon at the Toronto airport.

There are videos that show the crash and from inside the plane and some of you sent it to me — thank you.

The videos show that it is much more serious than what it looked like yesterday. It was not like the plane simply flipped — if you’ve seen the videos, you can see that the plane seemed to hit the runway hard and it immediately started skidding on its belly (not on the wheels). Its right wing hit the ground. There was a big fire and the plane flipped over. It is a huge relief that all 80 people on the plane survived and that the fire was quickly stopped by emergency crews.

A survivor, John Nelson, told ABC that when the plane was landing (from Minneapolis), he noticed that the runways were covered with snow that had blown in and that it was very windy. He said the plane hit “super hard” and the plane went sideways and flipped. He said he and other passengers were upside down.

Another passenger said they were like bats hanging upside down. They had to unbuckle and landed on the plane’s ceiling and rushed out.

One woman posted on Snapchat that she was “upside down.”

18 people were injured, including a child. Two of them are still in a hospital.

There is an investigation on the exact cause of the crash. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will lead the investigation and have the assistance of the NTSB in the U.S.

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Social Security Admin. acting commissioner resigns

CBS News reported that the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, resigned after staff from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) tried to get access to a centralized database that has personal and sensitive information related to social security benefits such as beneficiary records and earnings data. It looks like King did not want to give DOGE staff access and ended up leaving or being forced out.

CBS said King was replaced by Leland Dudek, who oversaw the SSA fraud investigation office.

The White House said President Trump plans to nominate Frank Bisignano to lead the SSA and expect him to be quickly confirmed by the Senate in the coming weeks. Bisignano is the CEO of Fiserv, a giant financial technology and services company.

The president of “Social Security Works,” a group that advocates for the expansion of Social Security, issued a warning that “Elon Musk is stealing your personal security data.” She said Musk breached Americans’ private information and that it poses a huge risk to them if this data leaks or is used to punish perceived enemies.

Musk posted on X (Twitter) a screenshot that he claimed is from the SSA database. He said this is a list of people who are “alive” and said there must be a lot of vampires because there are over 12 million people who are over 120 years old, including one person who is over 360 years old.

Musk is a conspiracy theorist and he usually runs with allegations that are convenient to him and his businesses, so you have to take his claims with plenty of grains of salt.

I checked some fact-checkers on Musk’s claims. Politifact explained that the Social Security database has arcane coding practices or missing data that may make it seem like there are many people over 120 years old. SSA staff would know how to run queries to have an overview of the ages of people.

Justin Wolfers, who is a U of Michigan economics professor, posted on X that he ran a query to show how many people alive are currently receiving benefits and that there are only about 89,000 people over 99 years old collecting benefits. Wolfers said Musk is trying to mislead people.

Politifact said the SSA does have a problem of making improper payments, with an inspector general finding that SSA sent about $70 billion in improper payments from 2015 to 2022 (this includes Trump’s first term). However this is a huge sum, this is less than 1% of the total payments in that 2015-2022 period. Politifact said outside experts have made many recommendations and warnings for SSA to improve its systems. It is for sure that SSA is not perfect, but is it as bad as what Musk says it is?

We’ll see what more comes out of this SSA drama.

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[Sponsored Video from Sorenson: www.sorenson.com]

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Pope Francis has pneumonia in both lungs

The Vatican said Pope Francis has pneumonia in both lungs. He has been hospitalized since last week. The Vatican said the pope’s health is now a “complex picture” and he requires further pharmacological therapy. Pope Francis is 88 years old and has had several lung issues in the past. The Vatican said the pope is in good spirits despite the pneumonia.

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Leader of “cultlike” Zizians linked to six murders

News reports said the leader of a cultlike group called the Zizians was ordered jailed without bail in Maryland after the group was suspected of being connected to six murders in three states.

The leader’s name is Jack LaSota (34), who identifies as a transgender woman. Two others in the group were also arrested. The group is described as young, intelligent computer scientists who met online and shared anti-government views and views on radical veganism, gender identity, and artificial intelligence.

One of those who were murdered is a U.S. Border Patrol Agent named David Maland, who died in January near the Canadian border in a highway shootout last month. A passenger in Maland’s car was also killed.

Other murders include one of the suspects’ parents in Pennsylvania and two people in California.

We’ll know more in the future on what prosecutors found to link this group with the murders.

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Judge declines to block DOGE from accessing data or firing employees

Fox News reported that federal judge Tanya Chutkan declined to block Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing government data or firing federal employees.

14 Democratic state attorneys general sued last week to try and block Musk’s actions.

The judge said the plaintiffs “legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual (Musk) and an entity (DOGE) that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight.” But the judge said her court has no authority to block Musk/DOGE because the plaintiffs have not shown “clear evidence of imminent, irreparable harm” to them.

Fox News said there are several other emergency lawsuits pending across the country seeking to block or restrict DOGE access and layoffs.

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That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.

SOURCES:

Delta plane updates:

https://apnews.com/article/toronto-delta-crash-9c37b48b9719cffdbeba920d46e116b9

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/world/canada/toronto-plane-crash-delta.html

https://nypost.com/2025/02/18/world-news/delta-air-lines-survivor-describes-mass-chaos-before-plane-flipped-upside-down/

Social Security:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-security-acting-commissioner-steps-down/

https://socialsecurityworks.org/2025/02/17/elon-musk-is-stealing-your-personal-social-security-data/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/politics/social-security-musk-team-access.html

https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/feb/17/are-150-year-old-americans-receiving-social-securi/

Pope:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/17/europe/pope-francis-polymicrobial-infection-intl/index.html

Zizians:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/leader-cultlike-zizians-linked-6-killings-due-maryland-118925013

Judge / DOGE:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-denies-democrat-led-effort-block-doge-access-citing-lack-proven-harm