Federal judge pushes back on acting Social Security head over threat to close agency

Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek threatened Thursday evening to bar Social Security Administration employees from accessing its computer systems in response to a judge’s order blocking the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing sensitive taxpayer data.

Less than 24 hours later — after the judge rejected his argument and the White House intervened — Dudek is saying he was “out of line.”

Dudek initially told news outlets, including in a Friday interview with the Washington Post, that the judge’s decision to bar sensitive data access to “DOGE affiliates” was overly broad and that to comply, he might have to block virtually all SSA employees from accessing the agency’s computer systems. But Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who issued the order, said in a letter that Dudek’s assertions “were inaccurate.”

“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 in the letter on Friday sent to lawyers involved in the case. “ … Moreover, any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect.”

In response to Hollander’s letter, Dudek said in a statement that the court clarified its guidance and “therefore, I am not shutting down the agency.”

Dudek, in a follow-up interview Friday afternoon with the Post, thanked Hollander for the clarification, adding, “The president is committed to keeping the Social Security offices open to serve the public.” He then acknowledged that this was an about-face from his stance in an interview with the Post earlier in the day.

“[The White House] called me and let me know it’s important to reaffirm to the public that we’re open for business,” he said. “The White House did remind me that I was out of line and so did the judge. And I appreciate that.”

Hollander issued a two-week temporary restraining order Thursday that prohibits Social Security officials from sharing personally identifiable information with Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, which has been empowered to carry out cost-cutting across the government.

Hollander, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote that DOGE “essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion” and “never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems.”

Dudek first made his threat to close down the agency during a Bloomberg News interview Thursday night.

Such a dramatic move to effectively shut down the agency would have been unprecedented in the agency’s history and would immediately begin halting benefit payments for millions of Americans.

One plaintiff in the lawsuit at the heart of the ruling said Friday that the judge’s intention was clear — and accused Dudek of acting “like a child who didn’t get his way.”

“For almost 90 years, Social Security has never missed a paycheck — but 60 days into this administration, Social Security is now on the brink,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in a statement. “Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has proven again that he is in way over his head, compromising the privacy of millions of Americans, shutting down services that senior citizens rely on and planning debilitating layoffs, all in service to Elon Musk’s lies.”

Hollander’s scathing, 137-page order was the latest court ruling preventing DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, from sifting through databases of federal agencies because of privacy concerns. Other federal judges have ruled that the Treasury and Education departments cannot share sensitive data with Musk’s team.

But DOGE’s activities at Social Security have drawn particular scrutiny because of its role as the government’s central hub for Americans’ most sensitive personal and financial information. The agency is the country’s largest benefit-paying entity, keeping data on millions of individuals who interact with other federal agencies, including the IRS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Agriculture Department, as well as state unemployment offices. About 73 million retired and disabled Americans receive monthly benefits from Social Security.

The White House, in response to Thursday’s court ruling, accused a “radical leftist-judge” of trying to “sabotage President Donald Trump’s agenda” at Social Security. “The President will continue to seek all legal remedies available to ensure the will of the American people goes into effect,” spokesman Harrison Fields wrote in an emailed statement.

As Dudek contemplated whether to halt agency operations, many headquarters offices in Woodlawn, Maryland, were thrown into chaos. The DOGE team of about a dozen software engineers were denied access to the building and to their government laptop computers on Dudek’s order, leaving their status on Microsoft Teams “Unknown,” as if they had quit or retired, said one employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The judge, concluding that DOGE’s access to so much personal information poses major risks, ordered team “members and affiliates” to delete non-anonymized Social Security data in their possession. The order blocked Dudek, Chief Information Officer Michael Russo and others from granting DOGE entry to their systems.

Since the White House elevated him to the top acting job six weeks ago, Dudek has made major changes. A mid-level data analyst accused by several now-retired career leaders of improperly sharing information with DOGE, Dudek has moved to eliminate 7,000 staff roles, announced plans to close dozens of regional and field offices and has claimed that fraud is endemic to agency operations, despite numerous audits and studies over the years saying otherwise. Trump’s nominee to run the agency permanently, Frank Bisignano, is slated to appear at his Senate confirmation hearing next week.

Dudek said he moved quickly after the ruling to terminate access for the DOGE team. But he said he is “trying to get some sliver of access back” for them “because they give good advice.”

As for the rest of the agency’s more than 50,000 claims processors, call center employees, disability hearings staff and other staff, “How are they not DOGE-affiliated?” Dudek asked.

Hannah Natanson contributed to this report.