The Social Security Administration (SSA) is facing a potential shutdown after a judge blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing Americans' personal data, prompting SSA's acting chief to threaten to cut off agency operations entirely.
The legal standoff stems from a lawsuit filed by unions and retiree advocacy groups, who argued that DOGE's access to SSA's systems violated federal privacy laws, Bloomberg reported. The Trump administration had tasked DOGE with rooting out fraud in government agencies, but critics claimed it was overreaching.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander issued a temporary restraining order, blocking DOGE affiliates from handling any non-anonymized SSA data and ordering them to delete any information they had already collected.
In response, Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek warned that the ruling could be so broad that it effectively bars all SSA employees from their IT systems. He suggested he might shut down SSA operations entirely, halting the administration of benefits to over 73 million Americans.
"Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency," he told the outlet.
The White House called the ruling a political attack, with White House Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields accusing a "radical leftist judge" of interfering with the president's anti-fraud agenda.
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