Laura Haltzel is the first former Social Security Administration (SSA) official who was present for the Trump administration’s takeover of the agency to speak out publicly in an on the record interview. In her first interview since leaving SSA, Haltzel told Entitled to Know that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “traumatized” SSA employees — and created “gross inefficiencies” in the system. Haltzel resigned her post as Associate Commissioner Office of Research, Evaluation and Statistics on February 28, accepting an early retirement offer that the administration extended to all SSA employees.
Haltzel describes an atmosphere of chaos and fear at SSA headquarters, based on her own experience and communications with colleagues in other departments. (Haltzel was based at the agency’s DC office while the headquarters is in Baltimore.) She had worked at SSA for a cumulative 15 years when she exited her job.
When asked why she decided to go public, Haltzel explained, “I swore an oath to defend the Constitution against every enemy, foreign and domestic… and I witnessed illegal and unconstitutional activity by our top leadership in the Executive Branch, by President Trump, and by Elon Musk.”
Under the influence of Trump, Musk and DOGE, SSA leadership has taken several extreme steps to downsize the agency and undermine its ability to properly serve Social Security beneficiaries. These actions include:
- Radically shrinking the agency’s workforce when staffing already is at a 50-year low;
- Accessing the sensitive personal data of millions of Social Security beneficiaries;
- Closing SSA field offices around the country;
- Restoring an old policy of clawing back up to 100% of beneficiaries’ monthly checks in the case of overpayments;
- Eliminating entire divisions of the agency by illegally removing staff “for cause” despite any performance appraisals to the contrary;
- Proposing to severely reduce customer service on the agency’s 1-800 phone line;
- Trying to make it harder for parents to register newborns for Social Security
The former acting Social Security Commissioner, Michelle King, resigned in protest over Musk and DOGE’s demands for access to highly sensitive SSA data without following long-established protocols. (So did her deputy, Tiffany Flick, who submitted a court affidavit about Musk/DOGE abuses.).
Haltzel says she was horrified at the violation of precedent — and federal law. “As a department head, I did not have the right to access beneficiaries’ private data on a regular basis,” while Musk’s young DOGE minions (mostly IT people with no experience in government or auditing) were rushed through a scant ‘security clearance’ process and granted full access to SSA’s database. “These people were not vetted the way they should have been,” Haltzel says.
She points out that any SSA employee who accesses Americans’ personal data without permission is subject to a maximum 5-year prison sentence and up to $5,000 in fines. Yet, Musk’s team of unqualified outsiders was granted access in a hurry, a move that Haltzel characterizes as illegal. She is deeply concerned about potential abuse of private data by DOGE.
According to Haltzel, Musk and DOGE’s chief tactic at SSA, as with other federal agencies they targeted, is intimidation of employees and sowing chaos to create an untenably stressful workplace — in hopes of driving out long-term workers and shrink the payroll. “There’s only one word for it: trauma,” says Haltzel.
“There was a daily barrage of conflicting directives… and we were constantly responding to deadlines by 5pm every day. It was hard to get real work done where every day you’re trying to comply with some new directive from the top, and then they would reverse course the next day. It created whiplash.”
Haltzel says that one person on her staff lost 20 pounds because they were sick to their stomach every day from uncertainty and “threatening emails essentially telling federal employees that they are worthless and disposable.” That staffer took up the administration’s offer of early retirement, according to Haltzel.
By Haltzel’s account, Musk and DOGE clearly have made the agency less efficient — even though their stated goal was to root out inefficiencies — along with supposed “waste, fraud, and abuse.” In truth, the Social Security Administration always has been one of the most efficient federal agencies, with overhead costs of about 1% of its operating budget.
Haltzel criticizes the leadership of acting Commissioner Leland Dudek, who took over after Michelle King resigned and appeared sympathetic to Musk and DOGE’s mission. In fact, before being promoted, Dudek reportedly had been placed on administrative leave for cooperating with Musk and DOGE’s requests for access to sensitive data. According to the Washington Post, Dudek told Social Security advocates at a closed-door meeting that Musk and Trump were “calling the shots” at SSA and he was merely implementing their policies.
She did not personally interact with Dudek, but Haltzel was told by colleagues that his personal style was “very mercurial and dismissive.” She says that Dudek seemed uncurious about the workings of the agency he had just taken over. When staffers would brief Dudek on their departments’ operations, Haltzel says, he would “cut them off after one minute and say, ‘I’ve heard enough.”
According to Pro Publica, Dudek defended himself by telling advocates, “I’ve had to make some tough choices, choices I didn’t agree with. But the president wanted it and I did it.”
When asked why she thinks Trump and Musk are trying so hard to disrupt the Social Security Administration, Haltzel said it is part of their effort to discredit the entire federal government. “There’s a narrative that they want to sell that government doesn’t work. Apparently, the best way to prove that narrative… is to make it so.”
She acknowledges that the administration also may be targeting SSA because of Musk’s apparent hostility to Social Security itself, which he recently called a “Ponzi scheme.” Musk told the media that there is $700 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in “entitlement programs,” and that he intends to slash spending by that same amount — even though his baseless claims about Social Security fraud have been thoroughly discredited.
Underfunded and understaffed, SSA already was struggling to provide adequate customer service to beneficiaries before Trump and Musk took over. DOGE’s raiding of agency resources will only worsen SSA’s ability to serve the public. “The reduction in customer service ironically reinforces the Musk/DOGE narrative of government dysfunction. It has the potential to become self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Haltzel.
While the media have quoted unnamed SSA staffers in reports about Musk/DOGE interference, no agency officials who were there at the beginning of the Trump administration have gone ‘on-the-record’ with their criticisms until today. Haltzel believes that by being outside the Agency now — and having freedom of speech — she has a special duty to ensure that she speaks on behalf of those still within SSA, for whom doing so would put their jobs at risk. Haltzel realizes that going public is a risk to herself and her family, though she notes that they have taken precautions against retribution by Trump and Musk’s supporters.
“I have taken the oath of office multiple times at multiple agencies. Just because I’m not a federal employee does not diminish the oath I took. It has no expiration date,” she says. “I believe you are either a person of integrity and speak up — or you are not. I will continue to be a person of integrity. I’m not going to change who I am.”