Free Republic

The drama offers a case study in how Elon Musk’s team sought to run a critical government agency through misinformation and social media blasts — and how longtime employees responded.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...

Leland Dudek was an obscure bureaucrat at the Social Security Administration who dedicated his career to stopping fraud. But when he worked with the Department of Government Efficiency to do just that, he came close to being fired. “At 4:30pm EST, my boss called me to tell me I had been placed on administrative leave pending an Investigation,” Dudek wrote on LinkedIn. “They want to fire me for cooperating with DOGE,” he wrote in a now-deleted post obtained by The Daily Wire. Then, a stunning reversal occurred. It was Acting Social Security Commissioner Michelle King who was out of a...

The acting head of the Social Security Administration (SSA) quit her job over the weekend after butting heads with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), over efforts to access certain sensitive government records, according to reports. The Washington Post reported that three people familiar with Michelle King’s departure said on Monday that she stepped down from her position after the disagreement. In response to King’s departure, President Donald Trump reportedly appointed Leland Dudek to lead the agency as the president’s nominee to serve as commissioner of the SSA, Frank Bisignano, is vetted by federal lawmakers. …