The acting social security chief now says that he will not stop the agency after the Doge decision
The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration now says that he “does not close the agency” after having suggested earlier that he could do so following the decision of a judge limiting access to the Ministry of Efficiency to Sensitive Agency data.
Leland Dudek, agency actor, said In a statement Friday He received “clarification directives” on the temporary prohibition order of the judge linked to DOGE activities.
“Therefore, I do not close the agency,” he said in the statement. “President Trump supports the maintenance of open social security offices and the right check for the right person at the right time. SSA employees and their work will continue under the [temporary restraining order]. “”
A sign for the Social Security Administration is seen outside its head office in Woodlawn, Maryland, Thursday, March 20, 2025.
Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, included via Getty Images
In a prescription Thursday, the American district judge Ellen Lipton Hollander prevented the agency from granting staff affiliated to Doge access to agency systems containing personally identifiable information.
In a series of interviews Thursday and Friday, Dudek seemed to suggest that the decision to decision of the judge who blocks Doge of access to ASA data would force him to interrupt social security payments and to block all employees of the agency’s systems.
“My anti-fraud team would be Doge’s subsidiaries. My computer staff would be Doge’s subsidiaries,” he said to Bloomberg News THURSDAY. “In the current state of things, I will follow it exactly and will end the access by all SSA employees to our computer systems.”
He continued: “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts understand how they want to manage a federal agency.”
And in a separate Washington Post maintenanceHe doubled, suggesting that “everything in the agency” processes personally identifiable information, known as PII.
“Everything in this agency is PII,” said Dudek. “Unless I get clarification, I’m just going to start stopping it. I don’t have much choice here. ”
The judge postponed Friday in a letter to the lawyer, writing that “any suggestion that the order may require the delay or suspension of payments of services is incorrect”.
In the letter, she wrote that she was aware of the reports with the comments of Dudek exposing her conviction that practically all SSA employees would come under her order and therefore have their access to the agency’s computer systems.
“Such claims concerning the scope of the order are inaccurate,” wrote the judge. “SSA employees who are not involved in the DOGE team or in the works of the DOGE team are not subject to the order … In addition, any suggestion that the order may require the delay or suspension of service payments is incorrect.”
The AARP was one of the many organizations that exploded Dudek’s comments threatening to close the agency.
“Social security has never lacked payment and AARP and our tens of millions of members will not be there and will not let it happen now,” the main vice-president of the John Hista campaigns said in a statement.
