Elon Musk Has Reportedly Cut Off a Bunch of People From Their Rightful Social Security

Yahoo

25-04-2025

Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency is cutting off Americans from the Social Security benefits they're supposed to be receiving by writing them off as dead — even though they're very much among the living, the Daily Beast reports.
"We have people who did not receive benefits come in every day with their ID and say, 'I'm not dead, I'm alive!" Rennie Glasgow, a claims technical analyst and fifteen-year veteran of the Social Security Administration who works at the agency's office in Schenectady, New York, told the Beast.
These clerical zombies are the collateral damage of DOGE's meddling with the SSA's "Death Master File," a comprehensive list of deceased individuals who should no longer receive benefits. Musk, who has called Social Security the "biggest ponzi scheme of all time" and has spread outrageous claims of mass benefits fraud, ordered millions of people who were "probably" dead to be moved to the list, the Washington Post reported, in order to make it more accurate.
"[DOGE staffers] went into the system and they killed off people," Glasgow told the Beast. "About four million people, they marked them as dead. But they're not sure if those people were supposed to be marked as dead, so they're sending us an email saying, 'If these people come into the office with their identification, you can reinstate them.'"
As with other federal agencies, DOGE has swept through the SSA like a tornado. Under its recommendations, the SSA will lay off 7,000 employees, reducing its workforce to 50,000. Dozens of its offices across the country have either already been closed or will be. Its website constantly crashes, while its phone helplines are being shut down.
Glasgow's office is reeling from the brutal changes, losing eight employees in a location that now only has 30, with only four of its 18 service windows able to stay open. For two hours every day, its computer system goes dark.
In what is one of its most flagrant intrusions into the SSA's operations, the Trump administration is also attempting to force over 6,000 immigrants to "self-deport" by placing them in the Death Master File. Once so interred, a person on this list is cut off from accessing bank accounts and credit cards in the US — a veritable financial death sentence.
"When they mark someone dead on the Social Security record, it stops their life," Glasgow told the Beast. "It stops their car payments, it stops their credit, it stops their ability to do anything. Their identification gets flagged. And most times those things have to go to the payment center."
Even now, Social Security remains overwhelmingly popular with Americans across virtually all demographics. But Glasgow suspects that Musk and DOGE are deliberately sabotaging the agency so that the public will one day turn on it.
More on DOGE: Elon Musk's DOGE Has Been a Dismal Failure