Staff on the Social Safety Administration have been banned from studying information web sites on work units, within the newest assault on the beleaguered company by the Trump administration and Elon Musk.
The all-staff e-mail despatched on Thursday morning mentioned that “efficient right now” Social Safety Administration (SSA) employees can be prevented from accessing sure web sites together with “on-line buying”, “basic information” and “sports activities”.
“These extra restrictions will assist scale back danger and higher defend the delicate data entrusted to us in our many techniques,” mentioned the e-mail obtained by NBC Information. Employees can apply to supervisors for exceptions.
The transfer on the SSA comes amid mounting unprecedented efforts by the White Home to curtail the position of mainstream media in Washington, which additionally contains canceled media contracts for federal businesses and the ouster of reports retailers from press briefings.
The SSA e-mail got here hours after the Washington Submit reported that the newly appointed interim head of the company had earlier this week acknowledged the tech billionaire Musk’s “division of presidency effectivity” (or Doge) was directing the company to purge 1000’s of jobs and shrink its price range.
In a gathering on Tuesday, the appearing SSA commissioner, Lelan Dudek, instructed senior employees and about 4 dozen legal-aid attorneys, amongst different advocates for the disabled and aged, that “issues are at present working in a means I’ve by no means seen in authorities earlier than”, in response to assembly notes obtained by the Submit.
“DOGE individuals are studying and they’re going to make errors, however we now have to allow them to see what’s going on at SSA,” Dudek instructed the group, in response to the notes.
“I’m counting on longtime profession individuals to tell my work, however I’m receiving choices which might be made with out my enter. I’ve to effectuate these choices.”
Trump has repeatedly promised that social safety advantages – and Medicare and Medicaid – are protected, whilst Musk’s tech squad gained entry to databases containing delicate, personal taxpayer data, ostensibly tasked with rooting out mass fraud, for which no proof exists.
In an interview final week with the rightwing podcaster Joe Rogan, Musk referred to as social safety “the most important Ponzi scheme of all time”. Musk’s declare that enormous numbers of centenarians are fraudulently receiving retirement advantages has been debunked – however Trump repeated the untruth throughout his handle to Congress on Tuesday evening.
With lower than a fortnight within the job, Dudek has to date introduced plans to slash 7,000 jobs, the equal of 1 in eight positions on the company charged with working the safety-net program utilized by 73 million retired and disabled People.
There was an exodus of senior executives, taking with them a long time of expertise and information concerning the advanced social safety system. Dudek has additionally, apparently on the behest of Musk’s Doge, closed regional hubs and discipline workplaces the place SSA customers go for assist, and whole applications and departments have been consolidated or closed.
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