The head of the Social Security Administration is backing down on his threat to shut down the agency after a panicked slapdown from the White House.
On Friday, Interim SSA Commissioner Lee Dudek threatened to close the agency over a judge’s ruling barring Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing personal data for millions of Americans—including Social Security numbers, banking information, and health records. Dudek said the order as overly broad and could apply to all the agency’s employees, forcing it to close.
But he reversed course after the White House intervened and the judge clarified that his order only applied to DOGE employees.
”I am not shutting down the agency," Dudek said in a statement. “President Trump supports keeping Social Security offices open and getting the right check to the right person at the right time. SSA employees and their work will continue under the TRO.”
Dudek expressed contrition over his alarming remarks after he received a call from the White House.
“[The White House] called me and let me know it’s important to reaffirm to the public that we’re open for business,” he told the Washington Post on Friday. “The White House did remind me that I was out of line and so did the judge, and I appreciate that.”
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday blocking “DOGE team members and DOGE affiliates” from accessing any “personally identifiable information” at the SSA. In remarks to Bloomberg and The Washington Post, Dudek claimed the order could apply to anyone at the agency, which would force him to shut down.
“As it stands, I will follow [the judge’s order] exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems,” Dudek told Bloomberg. “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency.”
Hollander clarified her order in a letter on Friday.
“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, according to the Post. “Any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect.”
Musk’s DOGE has taken an axe to the SSA amid its crusade to cut government spending. The SAA plans to fire 7,000 of its 57,000 employees—12 percent of its total workforce—and shutter 47 of its field offices. To protect against identity theft, the agency will no longer allow beneficiaries to verify their identities over the phone in order to change direct deposit information, requiring them to do so online or in person.
More than 70 million Americans rely on Social Security benefits. The program has not missed a single payment in more than 80 years of operation.
A large majority of Americans support Social Security, making cuts to the program politically perilous for Republicans. A report from the nonpartisan National Academy of Social Insurance (NIRS) published in January found that 87 percent of people—including 86 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats—think that Social Security “should remain a priority for the nation no matter the state of budget deficits.”
A majority of Americans also think the government should spend more on the program—even self-identified conservatives.
“For the longest stretch of time, the majority of Republican respondents said that the amount spent on Social Security is about right, but over the past 10 to 12 years [they] now say that we spend too little on Social Security,” Tyler Perry, the director of research at NIRS, told The Daily Beast in a recent interview.
