Acting Social Security chief now says he won't shut down agency after DOGE ruling

A judge blocked DOGE from accessing some sensitive data.

The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration now says he is "not shutting down the agency" after earlier suggesting he might do so in the wake of a judge's ruling limiting the Department of Government of Efficiency's access to sensitive agency data.

Leland Dudek, the acting head of the agency, said in a statement Friday he received "clarifying guidance" about the judge's temporary restraining order related to DOGE activities.

"Therefore, I am not shutting down the agency," he said in the statement. "President Trump supports keeping Social Security offices open and getting the right check to the right person at the right time. SSA employees and their work will continue under the [temporary restraining order]."

In an order Thursday, U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander blocked the agency from granting personnel affiliated with DOGE access to agency systems containing personally identifiable information.

In a series of interviews on Thursday and Friday, Dudek appeared to suggest that the judge's ruling blocking DOGE from accessing SSA data would force him to pause Social Security payments and block all employees from the agency's systems.

“My anti-fraud team would be DOGE affiliates. My IT staff would be DOGE affiliates,” he said to Bloomberg News on Thursday. “As it stands, I will follow it exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.”

He continued, “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency."

And in a separate Washington Post interview, he doubled down, suggesting "everything in the agency" deals with personally identifiable information, known as PII.

“Everything in this agency is PII,” Dudek said. “Unless I get clarification, I’ll just start to shut it down. I don’t have much of a choice here.”

The judge pushed back Friday in a letter to counsel, writing that "any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect."

In the letter, she wrote she was aware of the news reports with Dudek's comments laying out his belief that virtually all employees of SSA would fall within the scope of her order and thus have their access to the agency's IT systems terminated.

"Such assertions about the scope of the Order are inaccurate," the judge wrote. "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. … Moreover, any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect."

AARP was one of several organizations that had blasted Dudek's comments threatening to close the agency.

“Social Security has never missed a payment and AARP and our tens of millions of members are not going to stand by and let that happen now," Senior Vice President of Campaigns John Hishta said in a statement.