DOGE Orders Layoffs at Social Security, Plans to Gut IT Team as Website Continually Breaks: Report

Despite Trump’s promises not to interaction Social Security, Elon Musk’s DOGE has asked for superior cuts to the agency. Critics person accused the billionaire and his squad of attempting to cripple America’s status system. Now, a caller study states that, per DOGE’s orders, the Social Security Administration has plans to occurrence “potentially thousands” of staffers arsenic soon arsenic adjacent week, successful an effort to further downsize the bureau and align it with Trump’s “efficiency” mandate.

The Washington Post reports that Musk’s “government efficiency” squad has demanded an extended simplification of workforce passim the agency. The paper describes the effort thusly:

The cuts person been ordered by leaders of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team, the U.S. DOGE Service, which reviewed the agency’s plans to shrink its workforce past week, according to 4 bureau officials acquainted with the conversations, who spoke connected the information of anonymity due to the fact that they were not authorized to sermon the plans. DOGE determined that the 7,000 jobs eliminated since February nether acting commissioner Leland Dudek done aboriginal retirements, buyouts, resignations and firings were not enough, the officials said. The DOGE team, which has amassed unprecedented powerfulness passim the national government, has demanded importantly deeper cuts to guarantee that Social Security meets President Donald Trump’s extremity to shrink national agencies, officials said.

According to the newspaper, the cuts being demanded by DOGE are crossed the board. It writes:

The DOGE squad did not supply a circumstantial fig of jobs that indispensable beryllium eliminated, officials said, but asked for unit reductions to wide areas of operation, including communications, personnel, legislative and legislature affairs, status and disablement policy, and different “support components.”

Among different things, DOGE has asked for terrible cuts to the administration’s IT team, the study states. That squad is presumably already nether a terrible magnitude of strain owed to the agency’s caller determination to downsize its telephone operations—a highly arguable determination that has forced an influx of postulation to the SSA website. The strain of that postulation has reportedly caused the website to clang aggregate times. A elder section authoritative told the Post that arsenic galore arsenic 800 radical could beryllium laid disconnected from the IT team, which presently has astir 4,000 members.

DOGE has already announced lease terminations for dozens of SSA tract offices crossed the country. This argumentation threatens retirees’ quality to get in-person assistance erstwhile signing up for status benefits. Under DOGE, the SSA has besides chopped telephone operations, and, now, volition besides seemingly chopped web operations. At the aforesaid time, DOGE has claimed that it volition re-write the SSA’s “entire codebase” successful a substance of months, a determination that critics interest could pb to superior integer dysfunction. Social Security activists accidental it’s beauteous wide that DOGE’s eventual extremity is to hobble the agency’s operations and destruct its quality to function.

When reached for remark by Gizmodo, a White House spokesperson told america this: “With a resounding mandate from the American people, President Trump is moving rapidly to fulfill his committedness of making the national authorities much efficient. He has promised to support Social Security, and each recipient volition proceed to person their benefits.” While failing to quality thing circumstantial successful the Post report, the authorities further stated that determination are presently nary finalized RIF (reduction successful workforce) plans and that the SSA was simply evaluating the adjacent steps.

If the Trump medication manages to cripple America’s Social Security strategy portion besides yanking trillions of dollars retired of Americans’ 401ks via an ill-advised, stock-market-killing commercialized war, it volition person efficaciously nullified the full conception of “retirement” for the foreseeable future.