'Welcome to the Oligarchy Era': Social Security Administration Switches Communications to Musk's X

The Trump administration faced a fresh wave of criticism on Friday in response to reporting that the Social Security Administration is cutting its communications staff and will shift from using press releases to billionaire Elon Musk's social media platform X.

Musk, the richest person on Earth, is notably also the de facto leader of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is leading the administration's effort to gut the federal bureaucracy—though the billionaire faces a rapidly approaching 130-day limit for how long he can serve as a "special government employee" under federal law.

"Elon Musk is forcing seniors onto X to learn about and get news about Social Security," Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, which advocates for universal healthcare, wrote on the platform Friday. "The only person this benefits is Elon Musk. Welcome to the oligarchy era."

Martin O'Malley, who led the agency during the Biden administration, also responded to the reporting on X, saying, "This flagrant conflict of interest stands to serve the interests of Elon Musk while the American people are robbed of fair access to THEIR Social Security Administration and the benefits they worked so hard to earn."

During a Thursday call with employees, SSA Midwest-West (MWW) Regional Commissioner Linda Kerr-Davis said that instead of making announcements via press releases or "Dear Colleague" letters, "the agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public—formerly known as Twitter," according to Federal News Network. "This will become our communication mechanism."

"If you're used to getting press releases and Dear Colleague letters, you might want to subscribe to the official SSA X account, so you can stay up to date with agency news," Kerr-Davis told agency workers. "I know this probably sounds very foreign to you—it did to me as well—and not what we are used to, but we are in different times now."

Federal News Network also detailed her comments on reassigning workers to minimize the need for layoffs at the agency:

The reassignments will lead to major staffing cuts to regional offices. Kerr-Davis said the MWW regional office has about 550 employees now, but will only have about 70 employees under the new "skinny regional office" model.

"Won't losing subject-matter experts lead directly to fraud, waste, and abuse? Yes," Kerr-Davis told employees. "Things are going to break, and they're going to break fast. We know that, but hopefully we'll be able to get some support."

Kerr-Davis added that the reassignments will be a "welcome addition" for understaffed field offices. But in many cases, reassigned employees will work in less senior positions.

"I can only imagine how this shift might make them feel, after years of dedicated service in their prior roles. They are used to being experts in their field, and we're asking them to take on new responsibilities," she said. "For some, it's going back to work they used to do a long time ago, which may look very different."

Kerr-Davis' comments were also reported Friday by Wired, which noted that she did not respond to a request for comment. However, Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, said: "This reporting is misleading. The Social Security Administration is actively communicating with beneficiaries and stakeholders."

"There has not been a reduction in workforce," Huston told Wired. "Rather, to improve the delivery of services, staff are being reassigned from regional offices to front-line help—allocating finite resources where they are most needed. President Trump will continue to always protect Social Security."

HuffPost pointed out Friday that "in recent weeks, queries to the SSA press line have produced responses from White House spokespeople instead of Social Security spokespeople."

The SSA has not published a press release on its website since March 27, but has been sharing updates on its X account, @SocialSecurity, in recent weeks—the latest post, from Wednesday, addresses the rollback of a planned identity verification policy and related phone service cuts.

American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees president Lee Saunders said in a Friday statement that "retirees, disabled individuals, and the millions of beneficiaries who rely on Social Security should not need an X account to receive updates on the program."

"Moving all Social Security communications to Elon Musk's personal social media platform is a blatant effort to gain more users and pad X's profits," the union leader charged. "This move should ring alarm bells everywhere. Social Security belongs to the hardworking taxpayers who have paid into the program, not an unelected billionaire like Musk."

"This administration has made their desire to gut and then privatize Social Security clear. Shuttering the program's regional offices and moving all communications to a single, unaccountable, insecure, for-profit social media company is just the next step in their scheme to enrich billionaires with our tax dollars," he added. "This is exactly why we need to keep Musk and his DOGE cronies out of the Social Security Administration, and we're not going to give up this fight."

AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Alliance for Retired Americans are fighting DOGE's access to sensitive personal data at the SSA in federal court.