{"id":40141,"date":"2025-03-24T16:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T21:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=40141"},"modified":"2025-03-24T22:09:21","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T03:09:21","slug":"social-security-administrator-backs-out-of-shutting-down-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=40141","title":{"rendered":"Social Security administrator backs out of \u2018shutting down\u2019 agency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The head of the Social Security Administration (SSA) said Friday that he wouldn\u2019t be \u201cshutting down the agency\u201d after a federal judge backed up a temporary restraining order issued against Elon Musk\u2019s\u2002<\/u><\/a>government cost-cutting panel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SSA chief Leland Dudek, an appointee of President Trump responsible for implementing cuts from Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said Friday that the court had clarified its position on its restraining order and that the agency would continue working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am not shutting down the agency,\u201d Dudek said in a statement. \u201cSSA employees and their work will continue under the [temporary restraining order].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dudek has indicated he\u2019s not the one running the show at the SSA, but is rather following orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions,\u201d Dudek said in notes on a meeting he took with legal aide attorneys, as reported by<\/u><\/a> The Washington Post earlier in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dudek described the DOGE team that\u2019s calling the shots at Social Security as \u201coutsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs\u201d but said he and his colleagues \u201chave to let them see what is going on at SSA,\u201d according to the meeting notes that were obtained by the Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander issued an opinion that said the DOGE team was engaged in a \u201cfishing expedition\u201d at the SSA and that it hasn\u2019t provided \u201ceven a single reason\u201d it would need access to the trove of personal taxpayer data it is seeking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDefendants, with so called experts on the DOGE Team, never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA\u2019s entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said the restraining order against DOGE \u201cserves the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DOGE has been running roughshod through the federal government, making huge cuts at agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and accessing programs as diverse as the Treasury Department\u2019s international payments system and the IRS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SSA is slated to close dozens of offices this year as part of the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to shrink the size of the federal government, according to multiple media reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tens of millions of Americans receive retirement and disability benefits from the SSA, according to agency figures. In 2023, 72 million people were on some form of Social Security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The head of the Social Security Administration (SSA) said Friday that he wouldn\u2019t be \u201cshutting down the agency\u201d after a federal judge backed up a temporary restraining order issued against Elon Musk\u2019s\u2002government cost-cutting panel. SSA chief Leland Dudek, an appointee of President Trump responsible for implementing cuts from Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said Friday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":40142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[32790,32354,4225],"class_list":["post-40141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-shutting-down-agency","tag-administrator","tag-social-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40143,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40141\/revisions\/40143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}