From the New York Times:
Elon Musk stood before a giant American flag at a Wisconsin political rally in March and rolled out an eye-popping allegation of rampant fraud at the Social Security Administration. Scammers, he said, were making 40 percent of all calls to the agency’s customer service line.
Social Security employees knew the billionaire’s claim had no basis in fact. After journalists followed up, staff members began drafting a response correcting the record.
That’s when Leland Dudek — plucked from a midlevel job only six weeks earlier to run Social Security because of his willingness to cooperate with Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — got an angry call from the White House, according to several people familiar with the exchange.
“The number is 40 percent,” insisted Katie Miller, a top administration aide who was working closely with Mr. Musk, according to one of the people familiar with the April 1 call. President Trump believed Mr. Musk, she said. “Do not contradict the president.”
Throughout the early months of this Trump presidency, Mr. Musk and his allies systematically built a false narrative of widespread fraud at the Social Security Administration based on misinterpreted data, using their claims to justify an aggressive effort to gain access to personal information on millions of Americans, a New York Times investigation has found. …
Mr. Dudek was recently placed on administrative leave …
Mr. Dudek, 48, has told associates that while he did his best to fend off deeper cuts, he harbors deep misgivings about the effect of DOGE’s oversight, according to several people familiar with the conversations. …
On Feb. 27, a DOGE engineer told Mr. Dudek in an email that the administration had identified roughly three dozen federal contracts in Maine as “nonessential,” including the two from Social Security.
“We should cancel them,” wrote the engineer, Ethan Shaotran, 23, who declined to comment when reached by The Times. …
Mr. Dudek faced another crisis on March 20, when a federal judge issued an order prohibiting Mr. Musk’s team from entering Social Security databases that contained personally identifying information. …
On the night of the ruling, two DOGE leaders told Mr. Dudek that the agency should continue allowing access to the data despite the judge’s order, with one arguing that the order was so ambiguous that it could block all Social Security employees, not just members of DOGE, from gaining access, according to a person familiar with events. …
One question I have after reading this is whether Dudek talked with the Times. I’ll guess he did.
38 comments:
Funny that Leland turned out being right. The Supreme Court overruled that judge last week.
She’s Stephen Millers wife… enough said.
“The number is 40 percent,” insisted Katie Miller, a top administration aide who was working closely with Mr. Musk.
Of course that liar talked with the New York Times!
Yep, Stevie will be raising a Musk-brat soon enough!
Leland Dudek used private email to send government documents to his DODGY contacts in December 2024! He was under investigation and on admin leave before he was assigned as Acting COSS. He never managed anyone before that. Not that Frank is any better. Don’t be fooled, the goal is to privatize social security and turn a profit for the billionaires by any means necessary. #NoKings
Funny how strenuously The NY Times objects to federal officials like Elon Musk and DOGE to getting government data, but then no issue with anonymous sources sharing that data (illegally) with The NY Times.
That infuriating!!! This all made me very unsettled, to say the least. 🤬
Wait till you get to the Oskar Schindler reference…..
What information exactly do you think was shared illegally with the Times?
We have survived DOGE for the most part. I will be surprised if our FOs survive tomorrow’s rollout of the Area call queues. Hello even more pissed off beneficiaries, plus stupid enforced inefficiencies.
I was offended by the remark, comparing himself to Oskar Schindler. The holocaust was awful and making any comparison to attempt to make himself appear a hero is detestable. I gave Dudek a small dose of benefit of the doubt. I have written him off as insane. My question for Leland is the following: if you believed you were rescuing SSA from the Nazi regime what does that say about you cooperating with the Nazi regime and attempting to help them?
PS I had family relatives who were put on trains and sent to Dachau. My great grandparents were affected by the war. Brothers and sisters and entire families were wiped out. If you believe you were saving us from the Nazis you need to say something Lee.
This Jew IS extremely offended by his remark! But I'm not surprised he said it...and yes I also had relatives who met the same fate as noted in the previous post...
Nothing DOGE or SSA related can ever compare to the horrors of the Holocaust.
As tempting as the pile-on of Lee may be, he answered the call and did what he could. Service has been terrible the past decade. We’re tech deficient. Easily the most disorganized when it comes to telework. The structure is management heavy. Poor training. And ten years from now…it will be the exact same story.
It's cute that Dudek has convinced himself (and will spend the rest of his life trying to convince others) that he was just a brave conductor confronted with a classic trolley problem.
He simply HAD to run over SSA employees, rural Mainers, and everyone in the general public who values data security. If he hadn't then DOGE would have driven the trolley over... uh... the same people.
Dudek is more John Bolton than Oskar Schindler. I look forward to not reading his self-published memoir when it hits Amazon.
He answered the call? He opened the door to the DOGE burglars to our private data and then offered them a ham and cheese sandwich.
Look it's Leland's alt account.
Please pick a side Frankie Switzerland.
But Mr. Bisignano acknowledged that the 40 percent figure cited by Mr. Musk was incorrect. “We’re going to be a fact-based, rule-based organization that can count,” Mr. Bisignano said.
In a statement later provided by the agency, Mr. Bisignano said: “The work that DOGE did was 100 percent accurate.”
Well according to the last post's comment section, he's (supposedly) posting here as himself so let's see what he says
Leland Dudek’s mug is now on the Drudge Report. This is not something to be proud of but your fifteen minutes of fame has now been extended five minutes.
Yeah, Oskar Schindler made lists of people to *save*. Dudek enthusiastically made massive lists of people to reassign to Schedule F, thus making them vulnerable to firing. Under his temporary “leadership,” SSA put a greater percentage of workers at risk than any other agency in the government. He’s just mad that he played the game and lost.
Today I learned that Dudek's wife is 72 years old.
Katie Miller’s alternative fact numbers and background explained by Vanity Fair.
Then they got a call from Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, who insisted, “The number is 40%,” adding, “Do not contradict the president,” as Donald Trump believed Musk was right—and in an authoritarian regime, the president gets to decide what constitutes reality. But the members of Musk’s team didn’t just use untruths to justify their work at the Social Security Administration. They also used their own inability to analyze data, as well as massive hubris, to do so.
Dudek better lawyer up because a bunch of lawsuits should be heading his way!
What is the area call queue?
Trump's AI plans leaked on GitHub
https://www.404media.co/github-is-leaking-trumps-plans-to-accelerate-ai-across-government/
The federal government is working on a website and API called "ai.gov" to "accelerate government innovation with AI" that is supposed to launch on July 4 and will include an analytics feature that shows how much a specific government team is using AI, according to an early version of the website and code posted by the General Services Administration on Github.
The page is being created by the GSA's Technology Transformation Services, which is being run by former Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd. Shedd previously told employees that he hopes to AI-ify much of the government. AI.gov appears to be an early step toward pushing AI tools into agencies across the government, code published on Github shows.
"Accelerate government innovation with AI," an early version of the website, which is linked to from the GSA TTS Github, reads. "Three powerful AI tools. One integrated platform." The early version of the page suggests that its API will integrate with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic products. But code for the API shows they are also working on integrating with Amazon Web Services' Bedrock and Meta's LLaMA. The page suggests it will also have an AI-powered chatbot, though it doesn't explain what it will do.
The Github says "launch date - July 4." Currently, AI.gov redirects to whitehouse.gov. The demo website is linked to from Github (archive here) and is hosted on cloud.gov on what appears to be a staging environment. The text on the page does not show up on other websites, suggesting that it is not generic placeholder text.
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency made integrating AI into normal government functions one of its priorities. At GSA's TTS, Shedd has pushed his team to create AI tools that the rest of the government will be required to use. In February, 404 Media obtained leaked audio from a meeting in which Shedd told his team they would be creating "AI coding agents" that would write software across the entire government, and said he wanted to use AI to analyze government contracts.
"We want to start implementing more AI at the agency level and be an example for how other agencies can start leveraging AI ... that's one example of something that we're looking for people to work on," Shedd said. "Things like making AI coding agents available for all agencies. One that we've been looking at and trying to work on immediately within GSA, but also more broadly, is a centralized place to put contracts so we can run analysis on those contracts."
Government employees we spoke to at the time said the internal reaction to Shedd's plan was "pretty unanimously negative," and pointed out numerous ways this could go wrong, which included everything from AI unintentionally introducing security issues or bugs into code or suggesting that critical contracts be killed.
The GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SCOTUS granted an administrative stay as the AFGE challenge makes its way through the courts. It did not make a ruling.
Calls to FOs will not go to the local office if there is not someone available there to take the call within sixty seconds. Instead, they will go to the first available person in an Area - the 60 second lag is not long enough to prevent routine calls to FOs from going to what is functionally an area #800. Since most Areas cross state lines, many callers will get a person who does not know the local referral numbers, state Medicaid rules, and State Supplement rules. Unlike with the #800, there are no safeguards built in to policy to prevent someone from outside the local FO from screwing up the cases of others through erroneous inputs. Most callers will get someone who does not know whether or not common business at their local FO does or does not require an appointment.
This only helps the FOs that do not answer their phones. All the other FOs are screaming through their chains of command that a train wreck is imminent at 9AM. They are being told that we need to watch the train wreck proceed before they make changes.
Just because you can do something doesn’t automatically mean you should. SSA is no longer barred from sharing data with DOGE, but that still doesn’t just inherently make it a good idea.
Is there any agency info or instruction on this? I’ve heard literally nothing about it and it’s a major change. Just curious.
The Times article illuminates a small part of the DOGE activity but misses the most important aspect of the past five months; the SSA staff cuts. Why did the Administration make the big, costly reduction in SSA staff when everyone recognized that SSA needed more employees, not less? The flim-flam about people over 120 getting benfits will be forgotten by August; the impact of losing 10% of the SSA staff will continue to hurt beneficiaries for years. The Times needs to do another story covering FOs, PSCs, ROs and TSCs--outside the Baltimore area-- and the impact and costs of the cuts to experienced staff and the utility of reassigned staff in direct service jobs. That's the real legacy of DOGE and the ACOSS.
Not that I am aware of. It was supposed to roll out along with the new phone system several months ago, but there were technical problems. Implementation for today was sprung on the FOs yesterday, sans guidance on procedure. There are tens of thousands of people who are not amused.
For those who criticize Mr. Dudek, my question to you is how would you have done things differently? He was working under ignorant and indifferent people who had the power and the will to do a lot more damage than they did, yet SSA is still here.
Still here in name only. Internal workings are totally screwed up and will take a reinstatement of staffs and offices to begin restoring operations. We are that desperate as people are starting to lose payments.
Here, here! I would never criticize Mr. Dudek. He did a wonderful job. He pacified DOGE, rooted out fraud, and only fired the most worthless divisions such as the Office of Transformation (wtf). Dudek is a true leader and should be honored for what he did and all the jobs he saved.
Why the reverence to Dudek? Do you think he’s in administrative leave for his outstanding work?
He went looking for Doge. He didn’t have to do that- he put himself out there and admitted to bullying people to get to where he got to. Doge wouldn’t have come looking for him (he was too far down the org chart). So it’s on him. He gave the data to Doge and did their bidding. He reorganized the agency, in a way that will most likely prove catastrophic, having no experience to do that. Now the ROs and HQ are gutted- there is no support staff. SSA needs more than just frontline workers.
In our frontline positions we desperately need the important support provided by the disbanded RO and HQ components. Those forced reassignments are hurting us more than the insignificant assistance they can provide. Need to hire and train new front line workers and return those important support people back to their specialized positions. HELP!!!!
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