Michelle King, the acting Social Security Administration commissioner, resigned over the weekend as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project looks into the agency for fraud and wasted taxpayer money, The Washington Post reported.
According to three people who spoke to the Post, King resigned over her disagreement with DOGE’s push to access Social Security information. President Donald Trump tapped Leland Dudek, a pro-Elon Musk bureaucrat who had been leading the SSA’s anti-fraud office, to take over as acting commissioner. Trump’s nominee for SSA commissioner, Frank Bisignano, still faces Senate confirmation.
While the Trump administration waits for the Senate to approve Bisignano, it appears to have an ally in Dudek. The new acting commissioner has reportedly posted positive remarks about DOGE and its cost-cutting efforts on social media. Trump’s decision to tap Dudek set off alarm bells among other SSA leaders, according to the Post. Martin O’Malley, who served as SSA commissioner under former President Joe Biden, lamented DOGE’s interruption to the agency and said that Trump’s move “sends a message that professional people should leave that beleaguered public agency.”
In a statement to the Post, the White House said it expects Bisignano “to be swiftly confirmed in the coming weeks,” adding, “In the meantime, the agency will be led by a career Social Security anti-fraud expert as the acting commissioner. President Trump is committed to appointing the best and most qualified individuals who are dedicated to working on behalf of the American people, not to appease the bureaucracy that has failed them for far too long.”
Musk’s focus on Social Security has enraged Democrats, who are warning against allowing DOGE to access SSA data, which includes American citizens’ sensitive information. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News host Sean Hannity that Americans can “rest assured” that they will “continue to receive [their] social security checks.”
“Do not buy into the lies from the legacy fake news media who are trying to … scare you into believing otherwise,” Leavitt added.
Leavitt said Trump “has directed Elon Musk and the DOGE team to identify fraud at the Social Security Administration” and that Musk and his team “suspect that there are tens of millions of deceased people receiving fraudulent Social Security payments.”
Since Trump was sworn into office last month, Musk has been viewed as the head of DOGE, but on Monday, the White House issued a three-page legal document to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan stating that Musk is “an employee of the White House Office” and “is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.” Musk’s role, according to the White House, is “Senior Advisor to the President.”
Musk posted about these suspected fraudulent Social Security payments to dead people on Sunday, showing millions of people over 100 years old who appear to still be on the SSA’s database despite there only being around 86,000 centenarians living in the United States.
“According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!” Musk wrote. “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”
Over the past 10 years, inspector generals’ audits found the same issue mentioned by Musk and concluded that “almost none” of those listed as over 100 years old were cashing their social security checks. According to a 2023 audit, around 18.4 million centenarians did not receive benefits despite being listed on the database, the New York Post reported. The inspector general’s report stated, “We believe it likely SSA did not receive or record most of the 18.9 million individuals’ death information primarily because the individuals died decades ago — before the use of electronic death reporting.”
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