Acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, resigned on Sunday after a standoff with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over access to sensitive government records.
The same day, Musk posted what he says could be the 'biggest fraud in US history' in which millions of 'people' over the age of 100 are collecting payments.
According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025
Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/ltb06VX98Z
King - who worked at the agency for over 30 years, left her position this weekend after refusing to give DOGE staffers access to sensitive information, such as the fraudulent payments to 'vampires' - with at least one recipient being older than the United States itself.
Which of course is the exact reason career employees shouldn't be holding the keys to the castle with the new sheriff in town.
According to the Washington Post, "Administration officials have also been skeptical of career employees' efforts to guard federal data, maintaining that political appointees should also be able to access it, particularly if necessary to root out wasteful or erroneous spending."
In the wake of King's departure, President Donald Trump appointed Leland Dudek - a manager in charge of Social Security's anti-fraud office, as acting commissioner, while the Senate vets Trump nominee Frank Bisignano. Dudek had previously posted positive remarks on social media over DOGE's efforts to cut waste, fraud and abuse throughout the US government.
Yes, there are FAR more “eligible” social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025
This might be the biggest fraud in history.
Trump picking Dudek to take over for King bypassed 'dozens of other senior executives who sat higher in the agency's leadership heirarchy, touching off alarm in and around the agency,' according to WaPo.
"At this rate, they will break it. And they will break it fast, and there will be an interruption of benefits," said former Social Security commissioner under Biden, Martin O'Malley - a former Maryland governor.
"It’s a shame the chilling effect it has to disregard 120 senior executive service people," O'Malley continued. "To pick an acting commissioner that is not in the senior executive service sends a message that professional people should leave that beleaguered public agency."
Yes jackass, that's the point.
On Monday evening, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had been fighting "fake news reporters" trying to "fearmonger" about Social Security payments.
DOGE's access to records across the federal government have prompted disputes with senior officials at various agencies. Perhaps most prominently, the highest-ranking civil servant at the US Treasury Department quit after similarly refusing to grant Musk's team access to the Bureau of Fiscal Service, which manages over $5 trillion in annual payments.
On Sunday, the Post reported that DOGE is looking to access a heavily guarded IRS system that contains detailed information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country. For some reason, Democrats seem to be the only ones freaking out about this.
And again, that's the point.
