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Federal judge pushes back on acting Social Security head over threat to close agency
Acting Social Security commissioner #Leland #Dudek threatened Thursday evening to bar Social Security Administration employees from accessing its computer systems
in response to a judge’s order blocking the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing sensitive taxpayer data.
Less than 24 hours later
— after the judge rejected his argument and the White House intervened
— Dudek is saying he was “out of line.”
Dudek initially told news outlets, that the judge’s decision to bar sensitive data access to “DOGE affiliates” was overly broad and that to comply, he might have to block virtually all SSA employees from accessing the agency’s computer systems.
But Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who issued the order, said in a letter that Dudek’s assertions “were inaccurate.”
“Employees of SSA who are not involved with the DOGE Team or in the work of the DOGE Team are not subject to the Order,”
Hollander wrote in the letter on Friday sent to lawyers involved in the case.
“ … Moreover, any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/21/social-security-benefits-trump-doge/
Federal judge pushes back on acting Social Security head over threat to close agency
Thursday evening Acting Social Security commissioner
#Leland #Dudek threatened to bar Social Security Administration employees from accessing its computer systems in response to a judge’s order blocking the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing sensitive taxpayer data.
💥Less than 24 hours later
— after the judge rejected his argument and the White House intervened
— Dudek is saying he was “out of line.”
Dudek initially told news outlets, including in a Friday interview with The Washington Post, that the judge’s decision to bar sensitive data access to “DOGE affiliates” was overly broad and that to comply, he might have to block virtually all SSA employees from accessing the agency’s computer systems.
But Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who issued the order, said in a letter that Dudek’s assertions “were inaccurate.”
Dudek first made his threat to close down the agency during a Bloomberg News interview Thursday night.
Such a dramatic move to effectively shut down the agency would have been unprecedented in the agency’s history and would immediately begin halting benefit payments for millions of Americans.
One plaintiff in the lawsuit at the heart of the ruling said Friday that the judge’s intention was clear
— and accused Dudek of acting “like a child who didn’t get his way.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/21/social-security-benefits-trump-doge/
Since the arrival of a team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency,
#Social #Security is in a far more precarious place than has been widely understood,
according to #Leland #Dudek,
the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration.
“I don’t want the system to collapse,”
Dudek said in a closed-door meeting last week, according to a recording obtained by ProPublica.
He also said that it “would be catastrophic for the people in our country”
if DOGE were to make changes at his agency that were as sweeping as those at USAID, the Treasury Department and elsewhere.
Dudek’s comments, delivered to a group of senior staff and Social Security advocates attending both in person and virtually,
offer an extraordinary window into the thinking of a top agency official in the volatile early days of the second Trump administration.
The Washington Post first reported Dudek’s acknowledgement that DOGE is calling the shots at Social Security.
But the full recording reveals that he went much further,
citing not only the actions being taken at the agency by the people he repeatedly called
“the DOGE kids,”
but also extensive input he has received from the White House itself.
When a participant in the meeting asked him why he wouldn’t more forcefully call out Donald Trump’s continued false claims about widespread Social Security fraud as “BS,”
Dudek answered, “So we published, for the record, what was actually the numbers there on our website.
This is dealing with — have you ever worked with someone who’s manic-depressive?”
Throughout the meeting, Dudek made alarming statements about the perils facing the Social Security system,
but he did so in an oddly informal, discursive manner.
It left several participants baffled as to the ultimate fate of the nation’s largest and most popular social program,
one that serves 73 million Americans.
“Are we going to break something?” Dudek asked at one point,
referring to what DOGE has been doing with Social Security data.
“I don’t know.”
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