President Donald Trump was requested at a press convention this month if there have been any federal businesses or packages that Elon Musk’s newly fashioned Department of Government Efficiency wouldn’t be allowed to mess with.
“Social Safety is not going to be touched,” Trump answered, echoing a promise he has been making for years. Regardless of his eagerness to blow up treaties, shutter whole authorities businesses and abandon decades-old methods of doing issues, the president understands that Social Safety advantages for seniors are sacrosanct.
Nonetheless, the DOGE workforce landed on the Social Safety Administration this week, with Musk drawing consideration for his outlandish claims that giant numbers of 150-year-old “vampires” are receiving Social Safety funds. DOGE has begun putting in its personal operatives, together with an engineer linked to tweets promoting eugenics and executives with a cut-first-fix-later philosophy, in a number of prime positions on the Social Safety Administration.
Their first wave of actions — initiating the elimination of 41 jobs and the closing of at least 10 local offices, to date — was largely misplaced within the rush of headlines. These first steps might sound restrained in contrast with the mass firings that DOGE has pursued at different federal businesses. However Social Safety recipients depend on in-person service in all 50 states, and the shuttering of workplaces, reported on DOGE’s web site to incorporate places in all places from rural West Virginia to Las Vegas, may very well be vastly consequential. The closures probably cut back entry to Social Safety for a few of the most susceptible individuals on this nation — together with not simply retirees but additionally people with extreme bodily and mental disabilities, in addition to kids whose mother and father have died and who’ve been left in poverty.
The Social Safety Administration, headquartered simply outdoors Baltimore, has greater than 1,200 regional and subject workplaces — almost a fifth of all the federal authorities’s workplaces nationwide. There are 119,000 visitors to those brick-and-mortar amenities each enterprise day. A lot of them would not have excessive ranges of laptop and web literacy and want somebody to assist them by means of all of the legalese of an almost century-old social program with a wonky consumer interface. That is additionally the place aged individuals can apply for Medicare, which doesn’t have bodily outposts of its personal. And it’s the place hearings are held — due course of offered — for beneficiaries who imagine that they’ve been unfairly kicked off of desperately wanted help.
What We’re Watching
Throughout Donald Trump’s second presidency, ProPublica will concentrate on the areas most in want of scrutiny. Listed here are a few of the points our reporters will likely be watching — and tips on how to get in contact with them securely.
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“It’s the place individuals entry authorities,” stated Kathleen Romig, a longtime skilled on this system on the Heart on Finances and Coverage Priorities who just lately served on the Social Safety Administration in a brief capability.
Within the occasion of extra Social Safety workplace closures like those that the Trump administration has begun pursuing — the president is broadly shifting to shut a variety of workplaces and has even floated the thought of terminating every single federal lease — it’s disproportionately poor individuals with decrease ranges of schooling who will develop into much less prone to apply for and get assist, research on past closures has found.
The White Home press workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark. However in a current Fox Information interview, press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized “pretend information reporters” for “fear-mongering” about Social Safety’s future below the Trump administration. She stated that Musk is barely going after fraud and waste in this system.
The roughly 15 million recipients of Supplemental Safety Earnings and Social Safety Incapacity Insurance coverage advantages — lots of whom are severely disabled and destitute, or are orphans — are among the many least politically highly effective individuals within the U.S. Many instructed ProPublica that the space to their closest Social Safety workplace is already lengthy, and that wait instances to get a consultant on the cellphone or a declare or an enchantment processed can vary from hours to years. Even earlier than Trump was inaugurated, the company’s staffing ranges had been at a 50-year low as a consequence of a decade of budget caps and cuts authored by congressional Republicans.
A number of SSI and SSDI beneficiaries in rural areas instructed ProPublica that they’ve been watching with anxiousness as Trump and Musk slash by means of federal businesses, realizing that any additional workplace or staffing cuts to the Social Safety Administration may very well be catastrophic for them.
Bryan Dooley, a 34-year-old with cerebral palsy who lives outdoors of Winston Salem, North Carolina, makes use of a wheelchair and struggles with talking (he communicated with me by means of a caretaker). He stated that his Social Safety advantages, which he receives instantly due to his incapacity and since that incapacity entitles him to a portion of his late mom’s Social Safety, had been mistakenly reduce off a number of months in the past. As he fights to get the help turned again on, he has been depleting his financial savings account attempting to pay his mortgage.
“I actually wish to keep in the home the place I lived with my mom,” he stated. “In any other case it’s a 24-hour care facility for me.”
Dooley, who works half time for a nonprofit known as Options for Independence that helps others with disabilities, stated that “we’re all watching” the developments on the Social Safety Administration. If his native workplace had been to be closed, he famous, he may need to coordinate with a caretaker or member of the family to take him 100 miles to Raleigh for administrative hearings on his advantages; scheduling appointments, already extraordinarily troublesome, would develop into nearly unattainable. “It could be a nightmare for all of us,” he stated.
That nightmare is now on its approach to turning into a actuality in White Plains, New York, the positioning of one of many company’s listening to workplaces on DOGE’s listing of closures. Based on a letter that New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand just lately despatched to the Social Safety Administration, the White Plains workplace, which serves beneficiaries throughout seven counties, presently has greater than 2,000 circumstances pending. Beginning in Could, aged and disabled individuals throughout the area should journey as much as 135 miles to the next-closest workplace, which for a few of them will likely be in one other state.
“Does the Administration have plans to shut further SSA workplaces?” Gillibrand requested.
The Social Safety Administration declined to answer an in depth listing of questions on DOGE’s current efforts on the company, together with the ten workplace closures and staffing reductions. A spokesperson did present a short assertion on the White Plains scenario, saying that the company had been knowledgeable by the Basic Providers Administration that the White Plains workplace’s lease wouldn’t be renewed and that there aren’t any plans to interchange the workplace. Many hearings will happen on-line by means of video and audio, the spokesperson stated.
DOGE’s seize of the Social Safety Administration started this week when Trump elevated to appearing commissioner a low-level official named Leland Dudek.
In a since-deleted LinkedIn put up, Dudek acknowledged that he had been surreptitiously feeding info to DOGE earlier than his promotion. “I confess,” he wrote. “I helped DOGE perceive SSA. I mailed myself publicly accessible paperwork and defined them to DOGE… I confess. I bullied company executives, shared govt contact info, and circumvented the chain of command to attach DOGE with the individuals who get stuff accomplished.” He added: “Every part I’ve ever accomplished is in service to our nation, our beneficiaries, and our company.”
After Dudek was put answerable for the company, he told staff that he hoped to reassure them that “our persevering with precedence is paying beneficiaries the correct quantity on the proper time, and offering different essential companies individuals depend on from us.” He additionally rebutted a few of Musk’s claims concerning widescale Social Safety fraud.
In a separate assembly, he instructed Trump administration officers and congressional staffers that certainly one of his new concepts is to “outsource” the roles of Social Safety Administration name middle staff, The Wall Street Journal reported late this week.
Nonetheless, DOGE has proceeded extra rigorously with firings and layoffs on the Social Safety Administration than it has at different businesses. Whereas aviation security and nuclear safety specialists, veterans affairs employees and firefighters, medical researchers and plenty of others have all been compelled out of their jobs by DOGE in current weeks, it wasn’t till this Thursday {that a} a lot smaller variety of just lately employed or just lately promoted Social Safety employees began receiving emails saying that their jobs weren’t “mission essential.” Based on emails shared with ProPublica, these employees members had eight hours to determine in the event that they wished to request one other job throughout the company, doubtless at decrease pay and in one other metropolis (such a job wouldn’t be assured, and relocation bills wouldn’t be lined).
These emails seem to have gone out largely to Social Safety Administration coverage employees and attorneys, together with those that assist administrative regulation judges write choices in incapacity circumstances — choices which will now take longer and probably have extra errors in them consequently, one company official instructed ProPublica. “Claimants can have adversarial results by way of delay and likewise shedding advantages that they may in any other case be entitled to,” stated the official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity for concern of retaliation. Social Safety incapacity circumstances have already got big backlogs on the listening to stage, usually taking more than a year.
Nonetheless, notably, staff “serving the general public instantly,” like these in subject workplaces, had been spared from these layoffs, no less than for now.
That stated, employees at Social Safety’s regional workplaces across the nation weren’t listed as “mission essential,” reflecting an additional misunderstanding on DOGE’s a part of what disabled individuals specifically want from the company, authorized support attorneys in a number of states instructed ProPublica. When a low-income SSI or SSDI recipient has an issue {that a} front-line rep at a subject workplace can’t clarify or repair, or is simply too overloaded with circumstances to take care of, it’s regional employees who may help resolve the scenario. When an individual with an mental incapacity doesn’t perceive why their advantages are being reduce off or why they haven’t obtained notices within the mail about their case, regional employees can look by means of the case file and determine what to do.
Regional employees don’t but seem to have been affected by DOGE’s layoffs, however many are actually feeling on edge. One regional workforce chief, who additionally spoke anonymously for concern of retaliation, stated that “no person is aware of how the RIF [Reduction in Force] goes to work” within the coming days, weeks and months. Places of work may very well be closed on the similar time that distant employees are ordered to return to an workplace, making a scenario by which some SSA staff will face multiple-hour commutes every manner each day, all however forcing them to go away their jobs and thus cease serving beneficiaries.
“We expect that’s the plan, in order that they don’t need to explicitly do as many layoffs” at an company as standard and heretofore untouchable because the Social Safety Administration, stated Jessica LaPointe, a council president for the American Federation of Authorities Staff. LaPointe represents Social Safety’s subject workplace and teleservice employees.
That’s to not point out the attrition that would end result from the low morale that has been spreading throughout Social Safety Administration staff’ Sign threads and blogs this week; the company is already essentially the most overworked and demoralized of almost any throughout the federal authorities, surveys of federal workers have discovered.
“And in the meantime the beneficiary ranks simply preserve exploding,” the regional workforce chief stated. (The variety of Social Safety recipients has grown by over 13 million since 2010, as Child Boomers surge into retirement.)
Even sustaining degree staffing, a number of Social Safety specialists instructed ProPublica, would, in population-adjusted phrases, quantity to a serious discount in this system’s potential to supply advantages and companies to its purchasers.
Martin O’Malley, a Democrat who was commissioner of the Social Safety Administration from December 2023 to November 2024 and likewise beforehand served as governor of Maryland, instructed ProPublica that he believes this week marked simply the beginning of what is perhaps an extended 4 years for Social Safety. “The American individuals by means of a lifetime of labor earn not solely these advantages however the customer support essential to course of these advantages,” he stated. “Their cash went to that, too.”
Trump and Musk “are going to interrupt the most important, most necessary social program in America,” O’Malley predicted — even when they’ve to take action progressively.
Lately, the Social Safety Administration together with the U.S. Digital Service had been working to make it easier for individuals with disabilities to use for Social Safety advantages. Officers carried out surveys of poor, aged and disabled SSI candidates about what would make the method much less burdensome, they usually then started creating a simplified application — with plain-language questions and a few pre-populated solutions — that will ultimately be obtainable to finish on paper, by cellphone or on-line.
The aim was to cut back the time that candidates spend making use of for advantages in addition to the time that company employees spend processing these purposes. Or, in different phrases: authorities effectivity.
But these efforts have been slowed now that Trump has renamed the U.S. Digital Service the U.S. Division of Authorities Effectivity Service.
“In conversations with common individuals about how Social Safety may very well be extra environment friendly, they normally say that they need extra employees on the cellphone strains and taking appointments, and extra workplace places, in order that they don’t have to attend 60 days after their partner or mother or father died, or look ahead to months after creating a life-changing incapacity,” stated Romig of the Heart on Finances and Coverage Priorities. “Proper now we’re listening to all these generalities in regards to the authorities being too huge, quite than a concentrate on particular person individuals attempting to entry companies from that authorities.”
Which of those philosophies the Social Safety Administration adheres to for the rest of Trump’s time in workplace will rely partially on which is embraced by Frank Bisignano, Trump’s nominee to develop into the everlasting company commissioner, who will exchange Dudek as soon as confirmed by the Senate. Bisignano’s angle towards Social Safety, its staffing, its regional and subject workplaces, and its customer support hasn’t but absolutely come into focus. He hasn’t but been questioned at a affirmation listening to.
What is thought about Bisignano is that he’s an skilled finance govt who oversees a $20 billion firm. And that in his time as CEO of Fiserv, the payment-processing big, his firm generated financial savings by closing about a hundred locations and terminating thousands of employees, offering them with the opportunity to apply for other roles.
