DOGE Attacks on Social Security Have Left Millions in the Lurch

When Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) was running roughshod over the Social Security Administration (SSA) last year, experts warned it could spell disaster for disabled, ill, and aging Americans who depend on its programs. A March 2026 report by the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) offers insights into just how dire the situation has become.

“It seems that applications are taking longer and being denied more often and running into more errors in the process,” Matthew Borus, a professor at Binghamton University and one of the report’s authors, told Truthout.

The new report is based on interviews with more than 50 benefits specialists working at dozens of organizations nationwide that, together, assist about 8,000 claimants each year in obtaining and maintaining Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Those programs provide financial assistance to about 13.5 million older Americans and those with disabilities.

The programs have long been criticized for their inadequacy and steep barriers to access. Now, things are getting worse. “It just feels like you’re banging your head against the wall,” Brenna, who is using a pseudonym for fear of retaliation against her organization or clients, told Truthout.

Brenna works as an attorney at a medical-legal partnership in Washington, D.C., an organization comparable to those interviewed for the DREDF and AAPD report. She helps vulnerable patients apply for SSI/SSDI.

“It seems that applications are taking longer and being denied more often and running into more errors in the process.”

“It becomes difficult to trust even what advice you can give patients because you hardly know what to expect [yourself] because sometimes what the Social Security Administration says is, in fact, what happens, and often, it’s not,” Brenna told Truthout.

Contradictions and a lack of accountability were among the common issues identified in the DREDF and AAPD report. Others include challenges with a new phone system, inconsistent and confusing field office policies, longer processing times, more denials and errors, and an increased number of overpayments and payment center issues.

These problems are likely the result of a series of changes to SSA’s customer service processes that began soon after Donald Trump returned to the White House on a mission to gut the federal workforce and slash spending on social services.

The Social Security Administration lost about 7,500 employees, or 13 percent of its workforce, from January 2025 to January 2026, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. Customer service positions were hit especially hard, with a loss of over 3,000 staff tasked with assisting visitors to field offices and callers to the administration’s national 800 number, according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report. That same report found that leadership shifted thousands of the remaining workers into customer service positions to plug gaps, but this means that many now responsible for customer support have little to no experience in their roles.

Changes have also come to the phone system. Brenna told Truthout she now often waits upwards of an hour on hold before reaching an agent, and once connected, the call often drops after only a couple of minutes. Borus said in his interviews with benefits specialists that many reported their calls were often rerouted between field offices, making it difficult to resolve case-specific issues.

Penny, an Illinois resident who has been struggling to access SSDI since applying in 2023 and is using only her first name to protect her identity, told Truthout that not only has the phone system changed, but so has the demeanor of the agents. “It’s aggressive from the minute you pick up the phone,” she said. “It’s like they’re trying to get rid of you, and it’s hard to fight through all of that to try to get an answer.”

“It just feels like you’re banging your head against the wall.”

Problems with the phone system are particularly damaging because, under a Biden-era policy that went into effect in January 2025, applicants are encouraged to call and schedule appointments rather than dropping in and taking a number at their local field office. Some offices have tried to enforce a blanket no-walk-ins policy, according to the DREDF and AAPD report.

Many of those local offices may shutter altogether. While it is unclear how many may have already been lost or are slated to close, advocates warn that a November 2025 report by the administration that it intends to cut visits to field offices in half this year points to closures. The Associated Press reported last year that 47 field offices would be closing, based on an analysis of a DOGE document. But the SSA later refuted that report. Regional offices have also been hit, with plans to reduce the long-standing structure of 10 regional offices down to only four.

There has also been a push for applicants to handle their cases entirely online. Borus told Truthout that it “goes with the DOGE-brained push toward ‘Let’s just automate everything and do it online and then maybe we won’t actually need staff.’”

But an online-only application process is unrealistic for many eligible for SSI/SSDI. As one interviewee put it in the DREDF and AAPD report, that process is inaccessible to “people who aren’t computer savvy, who use a smartphone instead of a computer, [or] who don’t have reliable internet access” including both “someone who’s in their 20s, but unhoused” and “someone who’s in their 70s and having issues with memory loss.”

The push for online processing has also caused frustrations for Penny. “Once Trump came in, I saw way more notifications through my Social Security [online account] that are completely unrelated to Social Security in any way,” she told Truthout. Sometimes, she said, she receives a push notification urging her to log into her account for an update, only to find “an advertisement about something the government has recently done, like ‘We just signed the whatever executive order.’”

Staff at local field offices have sometimes wrongly told immigrant citizens that the administration cannot accept their U.S. passports as valid identification.

Some eligible populations face particularly steep barriers to accessing SSI/SSDI. For example, Brenna told Truthout that following staffing shakeups, Social Security staff seem to lack the training needed to support immigrant claimants or claimants of color who are either citizens or eligible under a noncitizen exception.

“We have had several times when patients who have one of those [eligible] immigration statuses, like asylum, for example, are calling and hearing from Social Security, ‘Oh, only U.S. citizens can apply for SSI; immigrants aren’t eligible,’” Brenna told Truthout. “That’s a misstatement, but if you don’t have an advocate, what’s to encourage you to push back or ask further questions?”

Brenna also told Truthout that staff at local field offices have sometimes wrongly told immigrant citizens that the administration cannot accept their U.S. passports as valid identification and demanded to see their birth certificates.

Those who are unable to navigate this more difficult process, or face long waits or denials, can fall into desperate circumstances. “These are folks who are already in severe need,” Borus told Truthout. “These are not people with a cushion who can just sit around and wait.”

One benefits specialist interviewed for the DREDF and AAPD report said that at least 50 percent of their clients are unhoused by the time their organization intervenes, and another 25 percent lose their homes while the organization is working with them.

Penny told Truthout she would herself be unhoused if not for her mother, who also depends on SSDI but owns a small property in rural Illinois. However, the women can no longer afford the costs of property taxes, utilities, groceries, and other necessities on just one income.

“This is supposed to be my mom’s retirement farm, and we’re going to have to sell it and move,” Penny told Truthout. “If I was just getting disability payments these past three years, we could stay. But with no pillow for that interim, we are going to lose a farm. It’s not a nice farm or a big farm, but it’s ours.”

Brenna told Truthout that, for her patients who are facing terminal diagnoses, receiving SSI/SSDI can make “the difference of living the final part of their life with dignity and choice and making choices about how they want to spend their time that aren’t purely driven by worrying about whether they have money to pay rent or purchase food.”

Those are choices that are now likely being denied to a growing number of Americans, as the Trump administration paints SSI/SSDI — programs built to support some of the nation’s most vulnerable people — as sources of alleged fraud. The administration’s claims about Social Security fraud have been repeatedly debunked.

“It’s like I’m even more of a problem for trying to ask for the stuff that’s supposed to be there [for me],” Penny told Truthout. “It’s like I’m in the water next to the boat, and they’re like, ‘Oh, you want a fucking inner tube? Here, let me throw you a form you have to send back in two days, or we’ll disregard your entire request.’”