Social Security Chief’s ‘Turn It Off’ Comment Is Latest Insane Turn For Beleaguered Agency | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON — The non permanent director of the Social Security Administration steered company operations could be so impaired by a courtroom banishing Elon Musk’s DOGE workforce from delicate databases that he would simply end up the lights.

A federal choose on Thursday ordered Social Security to revoke the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s entry to varied databases containing Americans’ private data, and for DOGE staff or associates to delete any knowledge they’ve taken and take away any software program they’ve put in.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday night, Leland Dudek, the performing commissioner of Social Security, mentioned his personal employees would rely as DOGE associates and seemingly joked about shutting down your entire company.

“As it stands, I will follow it exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems,” Dudek mentioned. “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency.”

On Friday, Dudek indicated he was really speaking to the Justice Department about shutting down Social Security ― and probably halting advantages for 70 million individuals ― if the courtroom didn’t make clear its order.

“Unless I get clarification, I’ll just start to shut it down. I don’t have much of a choice here,” Dudek instructed The Washington Post.

Later on Friday, Dudek stood down, saying the courtroom had clarified its order.

“Therefore, I am not shutting down the agency,” Dudek mentioned in a press launch. “President Trump supports keeping Social Security offices open and getting the right check to the right person at the right time.”

How had U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander clarified her restraining order towards DOGE at Social Security? By merely stating in a letter it was “inaccurate” for Dudek to assert everybody at Social Security counted as a DOGE affiliate. That’s all it took.

(In an obvious coincidence, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Thursday talked about halting all Social Security funds as a method of rooting out fraud. “A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” Lutnick mentioned on the “All-In” podcast. )

Asked for clarification of Dudek’s “turn it off” remarks earlier on Friday, the Social Security Administration instructed HuffPost merely that it will adjust to the courtroom order. The White House merely blasted Judge Hollander as a “radical leftist” in an announcement that didn’t deal with the shutdown menace.

Rich Couture, spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees subchapter that represents greater than 40,000 Social Security staff, instructed HuffPost that as of early Friday afternoon, he hadn’t heard of anybody being shut out of IT programs.

Contrary to his declare that DOGE associates had been so quite a few at Social Security the company must shut down, solely 11 DOGE individuals had entry to Social Security knowledge, together with 5 “special government employees” from the White House and 6 on element from different businesses, in response to a letter Dudek despatched in response to questions from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) this week.

“The Trump administration is threatening to shut down all of Social Security simply because a judge ruled to block 11 DOGE employees from sticking their fingers in taxpayers’ private information,” Warren mentioned.

Dudek’s shutdown menace got here as Social Security prepares to shed employees whereas additionally making main modifications to company operations, with plans to cut back telephone service in favor of in-person visits to discipline workplaces throughout the nation. Employees have instructed HuffPost it’s a tough time to work for the company, with elevated calls from the general public compounding anxiousness about remaining employed.

“It’s almost as if we’ve turned into a call center with how busy we’ve gotten with calls,” one discipline workplace employee instructed HuffPost. “I mean it went from a point in time where we’d have maybe 100 calls a day, and then on a really big day, it would be about 150, and just on Monday, we had 350 calls.”

The employee mentioned that regardless that the company introduced on Tuesday that extra claimants could be instructed to do enterprise at discipline workplaces beginning March 31, in lower than two weeks, the company had not but briefed employees on new procedures, which staff discovered about from the press launch. (A spokesperson for Social Security mentioned coaching would begin subsequent week.)

The discipline workplace employees mentioned Social Security staff take pleasure of their work and resent disparaging statements about authorities staff from Musk, President Donald Trump and different Republicans.

“We are still the ones out there trying our best to help people and take care of their claims, because we do understand that this is an important time of their life, and most people aren’t prepared for it, and we are there to help them,” the staffer mentioned.

Dudek, previously a mid-level anti-fraud staffer, grew to become the performing commissioner of Social Security after going round his superiors to work with DOGE. He has since been a wrecking ball, consolidating workplaces, firing senior employees and even canceling contracts with the state of Maine in an obvious act of political retaliation towards the state’s Democratic governor for standing as much as Trump.

Dudek’s schemes signify the achievement of Musk and Trump’s anti-fraud agenda, with the pair falsely claiming Social Security makes bogus funds to tens of millions of nonexistent beneficiaries.

“He’s untethered and Musk wants it to be shut down,” Martin O’Malley, who served as commissioner of Social Security beneath President Joe Biden, mentioned of Dudek. O’Malley has beforehand warned that Dudek’s layoffs and different modifications might trigger the company to overlook profit funds.

The group Democracy Forward and AFGE filed go well with towards DOGE earlier this month. A former Social Security official mentioned in an affidavit as a part of the go well with that DOGE’s disregard for privateness protections “now threatens the security of the data SSA houses about millions of Americans” and that advantages may very well be in danger.

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a liberal group that opposes profit cuts, known as Dudek’s quick tenure the darkest time in Social Security’s historical past, saying he’d been promoted forward of greater than 100 better-qualified SSA staff.

“He has sown chaos and destruction. Now, he is threatening to shut down Social Security completely,” Altman mentioned. “Dudek is willing to deny over 70 million Americans the benefits that most of them rely on to survive, rather than stop DOGE from mucking around with our data.”

CORRECTION: A earlier model of this text misstated Howard Lutnick’s place.