Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency staffer who preached eugenics and declared himself “racist before it was cool” is reportedly working with the Social Security Administration.
Marko Elez resigned from the administration earlier this month after The Wall Street Journal uncovered a history of now-deleted racist statements on X, including support for “eugenic immigration policy” and calls to “normalize Indian hate.”
Elez, a 25-year-old engineer who previously worked Musk’s SpaceX and X, recently had an office at the Treasury Department and an email address with the agency, where he was “mistakenly” given “read/write” permissions to write over payment systems that disburse trillions of dollars, according to court documents.
Those permissions were “promptly corrected,” and a subsequent review determined that Elez did not modify the existing Treasury database, according to an affidavit from Joseph Gioeli, a deputy commissioner of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
“The Bureau used several cybersecurity tools to monitor Mr. Elez’s usage and continuously log his activity,” Gioeli wrote.
Elez then moved to the Social Security Administration, according to Bloomberg, as Donald Trump and administration officials single out the agency for potential cuts despite long-standing promises to protect it.
After Elez resigned, Vice President JD Vance encouraged Musk to “bring back” Elez. Trump, when asked about Vance’s support, said he didn’t know about “that particular thing" but agreed with the vice president.
“If the vice president said that — did you say that? I’m with the vice president,” Trump told reporters.
Moments later, Musk wrote: “He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine.”
The Independent has requested comment from the Social Security Administration and has tried to reach a phone number associated with Elez.
Elez now reportedly joins other DOGE staffers at the agency, where 58,000 government workers help run the nation’s retirement and disability programs. Acting commissioner Leland Dudek was reinstated to lead the agency after he was removed for sharing information with DOGE.
“There ARE good people in the government who want to eliminate fraud & waste. Amazingly, Leland was fired by Social Security Administration upper management for helping @DOGE find taxpayer savings. Can you believe that??” Musk wrote on X on Wednesday. “Thanks to President Trump, Leland was brought back right away and now HE is upper management.”
In recent days, Trump and administration officials have repeatedly suggested looming cuts to Social Security as well as federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid in an apparent attempt to justify Musk’s target figure of more than $1 trillion in cuts to federal spending.
Trump and Musk have amplified baseless claims that tens of millions of dead Americans are collecting Social Security checks. According to Trump, “if you take all of those numbers off, because they’re obviously fraudulent, or, incompetent, but if you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security,” he told supporters in Miami this week.
A meaningful reduction of government spending to cut the budget by trillions of dollars would require some combination of severe cuts to expensive but critical government programs like Social Security — as well as the Department of Defense — and tax increases.
Trump, meanwhile, is commanding lawmakers to make massive tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest households. House Republicans are proposing a budget blueprint that would add $4.5 trillion in new deficits through tax cuts, with an additional $2 trillion in cuts to “mandatory” spending that covers programs like Medicare, Medicaid and food assistance.
