Links here and here, with respect to Trump's lasting ability to find collaborators who blow smoke - this one at Social Security. A judge named Hollander calls a time out for common sense to prevail.
The first linked item [a carry of a WaPo item] begins:
Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek threatened Thursday evening to bar Social Security Administration employees from accessing its computer systems in response to a judge’s order blocking the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing sensitive taxpayer data.
Less than 24 hours later — after the judge rejected his argument and the White House intervened — Dudek is saying he was “out of line.”
Dudek initially told news outlets, including in a Friday interview with the Washington Post, that the judge’s decision to bar sensitive data access to “DOGE affiliates” was overly broad and that to comply, he might have to block virtually all SSA employees from accessing the agency’s computer systems. But Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who issued the order, said in a letter that Dudek’s assertions “were inaccurate.”
“Employees of SSA who are not involved with the DOGE Team or in the work of the DOGE Team are not subject to the Order,” Hollander wrote in the letter on Friday sent to lawyers involved in the case. “ … Moreover, any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect.”
In response to Hollander’s letter, Dudek said in a statement that the court clarified its guidance and “therefore, I am not shutting down the agency.”
This Social Security gaming is getting tiring and Trump should just leave elderly and other benefits alone. Cut the nastiness aimed so that billionaires can justify continued obscene lowering of their taxes by cutting government payroll and services - the cost side of tax and spend theology. It is sick what Trump is doing, while using Musk as his lightning rod and tool.