Employees at the Social Security Administration have been banned from reading news websites on work devices, in the latest assault on the beleaguered agency by the Trump administration and Elon Musk.
The all-staff email sent on Thursday morning said that “effective today” Social Security Administration (SSA) staff would be prevented from accessing certain websites including “online shopping”, “general news” and “sports”.
“These additional restrictions will help reduce risk and better protect the sensitive information entrusted to us in our many systems,” said the email obtained by NBC News. Staff can apply to supervisors for exceptions.
The move at the SSA comes amid mounting unprecedented efforts by the White House to curtail the role of mainstream media in Washington, which also includes canceled media contracts for federal agencies and the ouster of news outlets from press briefings.
The SSA email came hours after the Washington Post reported that the newly appointed interim head of the agency had earlier this week acknowledged the tech billionaire Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (or Doge) was directing the agency to purge thousands of jobs and shrink its budget.
In a meeting on Tuesday, the acting SSA commissioner, Lelan Dudek, told senior staff and about four dozen legal-aid attorneys, among other advocates for the disabled and elderly, that “things are currently operating in a way I have never seen in government before”, according to meeting notes obtained by the Post.
“DOGE people are learning and they will make mistakes, but we have to let them see what is going on at SSA,” Dudek told the group, according to the notes.
“I am relying on longtime career people to inform my work, but I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions.”
Trump has repeatedly promised that social security benefits – and Medicare and Medicaid – are safe, even as Musk’s tech squad gained access to databases containing sensitive, private taxpayer information, ostensibly tasked with rooting out mass fraud, for which no evidence exists.
In an interview last week with the rightwing podcaster Joe Rogan, Musk called social security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time”. Musk’s claim that large numbers of centenarians are fraudulently receiving retirement benefits has been debunked – but Trump repeated the untruth during his address to Congress on Tuesday night.
With less than a fortnight in the job, Dudek has so far announced plans to slash 7,000 jobs, the equivalent of one in eight positions at the agency charged with running the safety-net program used by 73 million retired and disabled Americans.
There has been an exodus of senior executives, taking with them decades of experience and knowledge about the complex social security system. Dudek has also, apparently at the behest of Musk’s Doge, closed regional hubs and field offices where SSA users go for help, and entire programs and departments have been consolidated or closed.
