Showdown Between Judge and Social Security Chief

After federal District Court Judge Ellen Hollander issued a 14 day temporary restraining order to block DOGE from Social Security data, Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek got into a showdown with her. The judge won.

Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is a subset of a White House IT team, not a government department.

On Thursday, Dudek announced Hollander’s references in her TRO to “DOGE affiliates” could be considered to mean any agency employee. He said in this spirit, he would follow the TRO “exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.” In effect, he would shut down the entire agency, stopping its payments and services. He told Bloomberg, “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency.”

Dudek was staff worker at the midrange in the Social Security Administration he secretly helped DOGE get access to sensitive records despite then-Commissioner Michelle King’s efforts to hold off DOGE. In LinkedIn, he posted, “I confess. I bullied agency executives, shared executive contact information, and circumvented the chain of command to connect DOGE with the people who get stuff done.” Getting King’s job at the top of SSA was his reward.

On Friday, Hollander responded with a follow-up order. She corrected Dudek’s incorrect expansion of the scope of her TRO and explicitly wrote “any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or
suspension of benefit payments is incorrect.”

Dudek backed down, announcing “Therefore, I am not shutting down the agency. President Trump supports keeping Social Security offices open and getting the right check to the right person.”

The case is American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees AFL-CIO v. Social Security Administration, 25-cv-596, US District Court, District of Maryland (Baltimore).

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Click here to read Hollander’s order.