I guess the Trump administration wasn’t ready for the pitchforks to come out just yet.
As we already discussed here, Trump’s interim head of the Social Security Administration threatened to shut down the entire program after Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander issued a temporary restraining order barring Elon Musk’s DOGE Boys from gaining access to personally identifiable information from SSA.
Leland Dudek is now backing down from his threat, but we all know this won’t be the end of it. The sabotage will continue despite this backtrack:
Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek is backing down on a threat to cease operations at the agency after a federal judge blocked staffers at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing sensitive data housed at the agency. […]
Hollander said DOGE was engaged in a “fishing expedition” for fraud based on “little more than suspicion” and said the temporary organization “never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems.”
Dudek, in a series of interviews following the judge’s decision, criticized the ruling as being overly broad and threatened to terminate access to sensitive data for every employee at the agency, arguing they could all be considered “DOGE affiliates.” […]
“Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency,” he added.
In a pair of letters Friday, Hollander called Dudek’s interpretation of her ruling “inaccurate,” clarifying that her decision should have “no bearing on ordinary operations at SSA.”
“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. A DOGE Affiliate is defined in the Order as a person working on or implementing the DOGE agenda,” Hollander wrote.
Dudek hours later walked back his threat.
“The Court issued clarifying guidance about the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) related to DOGE employees and DOGE activities at the Social Security Administration (SSA). Therefore, I am not shutting down the agency,” he said in a statement Friday. “SSA employees and their work will continue under the TRO.”
