Social Security Chief Says White House Ordered ‘Rapid’ Phone Service Cutbacks

WASHINGTON ― The White House requested the rapid changes to phone service that the Social Security Administration plans to put in place next week, the agency’s leader said Monday.

In a meeting with advocacy groups that are stakeholders in the agency’s disability and retirement programs, Leland Dudek said the sweeping changes he’s pursued since becoming acting commissioner last month were dialed up by his superiors in the Trump administration.

“He said, ‘The reason that we’re on this timeline is because we received a request from the White House. The leadership above me believes that we should do a rapid rollout,’” a source in the meeting told HuffPost. Two additional sources confirmed the account.

Dudek last week announced that for any transaction requiring Social Security claimants to verify their identities, starting on March 31 they will no longer be able to do so over the phone. Instead, claimants who can’t use the agency’s website will have to verify their identities in-person by visiting a field office.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said simply, “Any American receiving Social Security benefits will continue to receive them.”

Democratic members of Congress and groups such as the AARP have blasted the proposed change as an unnecessary burden on seniors and people with disabilities.

“With Americans already waiting hours to get connected with Social Security on the phone, it is outrageous that under this new policy, older Americans, especially those in rural areas, will have to call, wait on hold for possibly hours, make an appointment, or even take a day off work to claim the benefits they have worked for and earned,” AARP’s Nancy LeaMond warned in a letter to Dudek.

The changes are designed to root out fraud, Dudek told reporters last week, and could save as much as $100 million annually, which is a lot of money but still less than a tenth of a percent of the agency’s budget.

An undated draft “Emergency Message” explaining the new procedures to Social Security employees ― obtained by HuffPost ― suggested that they haven’t all been worked out. “Instructions are forthcoming,” the document says, for how to handle claimants living abroad who are unable to log in to the Social Security Administration’s website and can’t get to a field office, either.

In the meeting on Monday, Dudek acknowledged that the changes were happening at an unusually rapid pace. “In normal times, something like this would take two years to roll out,” he said, according to the source.

A field office worker told HuffPost last week they were concerned there had been no training related to the changes, which will likely result in thousands more field office visits. The Social Security Administration said training would start this week.

Trump put Dudek in charge of Social Security after career officials refused to allow Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” to have access to agency databases containing sensitive personal information about the 70 million Americans who receive retirement or disability benefits. Musk and Trump have falsely claimed Social Security makes millions of fraudulent payments, including in dead people’s names.

Dudek, a placeholder for Frank Bisignano, Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, has emerged as an unexpectedly fierce Trump loyalist. After Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) told the president she wouldn’t comply with his efforts to ban transgender athletes from girls’ sports, in an apparent retaliation Dudek canceled the Social Security Administration’s vital records contracts with the state of Maine. (Dudek quickly reinstated the contracts and apologized while admitting he was upset with Mills.)

Last week, after a federal judge blocked DOGE from accessing sensitive Social Security data, Dudek threatened to shut down the agency altogether, potentially blocking benefits for millions, and only backed down after the judge told him not to do it.

Dudek’s comments on Monday, which are similar to remarks he’s reportedly said in private on a previous occasion, strongly suggest he’s not a rogue actor, and his rapid-fire changes are done with Trump’s blessing. He acknowledged Monday that the changes could be disruptive, saying something to the effect of, “If this disrupts things for citizens to the point of being untenable, we’ll roll it back.”

The Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.