Trump Lied to Cynthia, Paul, and Olivia

State of the Union Claims of Help for Workers and Seniors Were False

This piece originally appeared on Fran Quigley’s blog Housing Is A Human Right on February 27, 2026.

In recent months, our eviction court clients included Cynthia, Paul, and Olivia. In his State of the Union address this past Tuesday, Donald Trump lied to and about each of them.

Cynthia (as usual, I won’t use clients’ real names) works as a restaurant server, and the vast majority of her income is tips. Like most tipped workers, she doesn’t make much money when all is said and done, and she came up short on her rent recently.

Paul missed work time after a serious illness. He is trying to catch up on back rent by working extra hours in the three jobs he holds down.

Olivia is in her late 70’s, and her sole monthly income is her Social Security check.

On Tuesday, Trump told the world that he was helping all of them: “With the great Big Beautiful Bill we gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors,” Trump claimed.

Those were lies.

They were among many that Trump packed into his bloated one hour and forty-eight minute State of the Union speech, the longest in history. CNN alone tallied dozens of false statements.

Many of those lies directly impact our eviction court clients. Let’s highlight three of them:

Cynthia and “No Tax on Tips”

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is causing enormous damage, which we highlighted in previous articles “They Should be Ashamed of Themselves” and “A Band-Aid to a Crushed Skull.” Even its silver lining is tarnished.

Yes, the legislation will allow some tipped workers to deduct up to $25,000 in tips from their taxable income.

But that hardly equates to “no tax on tips.” Even Cynthia’s low income often exceeds the $25,000 maximum deduction, and many tipped workers make so little they have no federal tax liability. Plus, Cynthia still owes federal payroll taxes on her tips.

More broadly, the Trump law does nothing to meaningful improve the grim working conditions of many tipped workers, who are exploited by a system created in a post-Civil War effort to not pay Black workers. A far better fix would be to drastically raise the disgraceful federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 per hour.

“(The Trump tax bill) does nothing to address the low wages, income instability, wage theft, and abuse tipped workers already face,” Nina Mast and David Cooper wrote in their excellent Economic Policy Institute guide to the new rule. “More broadly, the 2025 Trump tax bill that created the tipped income deduction simultaneously enacted massive cuts to health care, energy, and food assistance programs that will cause tremendous harm for millions of low-income households, including some with tipped workers—all to finance tax cuts for the ultrawealthy.”

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Paul and “No Tax on Overtime”

Trump’s promise to Paul is just as hollow. The same legislation created a small tax deduction—capped at $12,500—for the extra portion the Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay for some workers’ overtime work hours.

But, like tipped workers, those workers will still owe federal payroll taxes on their overtime pay.

Worse, none of even these small benefits apply to Paul, whose jobs are food delivery, ride-share driving, and irregular construction work. Nor do those benefits apply to the 57 million other U.S. residents who are “gig workers,” a number that is expected to become the majority of the U.S. workforce very soon. Even though Paul routinely puts in 60-plus hours a week as he tries to catch up on his rent, he and others who are classified as independent contractors rather than employees are not guaranteed a minimum wage and do not receive an overtime increase.

Again, Mast and Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute puncture the Trump hot-air balloon: “Any small, temporary tax benefits for some workers are vastly outweighed by the broader harms of the Trump tax bill, which delivers massive tax cuts to the wealthiest households while cutting funding for programs like Medicaid and SNAP, failing to invest in enforcing workers’ rights, and funding an anti-immigrant agenda that harms us all.”

Olivia and “No Tax on Social Security”

Once again, Trump’s “no tax” claim, this time for Social Security, is built on a very limited deduction: a $6,000 annual deduction for seniors age 65 and older.

Less than half of seniors will get that deduction, according to the Tax Policy Center. Most of those who will benefit make over $80,000 per year.

Olivia’s total income is less than one-fifth of that amount. That means that she is among the majority of low and middle-income seniors who already don’t pay income taxes.

Trump’s new law did nothing for her or other seniors like her.

Sadly, each week in eviction court we see people living through the same situations as Cynthia, Paul, and Olivia. That is true across the country.

Even more sadly, our president is not doing anything but worsening their struggles, contrary to what he told the world this week.