Social Security now uses Musk's "X" (a.k.a. Twitter) as its official media outlet

Blatant conflict of interest

Martin Burns & Mary Liz Burns for Common Dreams

No media outlet has done a better job on reporting on the havoc that special government employee Elon Musk and Donald Trump have unleashed than Wired. Their outstanding reporting continued as they scooped everyone by reporting that “the Social Security Administration will no longer be communicating with the media and the public through press releases and ‘dear colleague’ letters, as it shifts its public communication exclusively to X, sources tell WIRED. The news comes amid major staffing cuts at the agency.”

That’s right—all public information about Social Security will come via X. For example, in late March SSA announced that they updated their identification verification procedures via an announcement on their website. So in the future, SSA will have to put all of this into a 280-character post or SSA can go to 4,000 characters if they are willing to upgrade to Premium or Blue.

The first thing that came to mind with SSA’s announcement—wasn’t this a conflict of interest with Elon Musk’s role at X? Many other questions followed, such as the role of asking for feedback from Social Security stakeholders, members of Congress, and last but far from least in my mind—Social Security beneficiaries. I hope that congressional oversight or the press will be able to get some answers here.

According to Wired, SSA regional staff would be cut by 87%:

Today, the agency has 547 employees working in the nearly dozen regional offices (previously, the number was closer to 700, but many people have retired, a current employee with knowledge of the staffing numbers says). After the cuts, the number is expected to be closer to 70.

The Wired piece also raises what is a very ironic twist to this switch to X. SSA employees need to get special permission to access social media. Could the move to X make it harder for SSA employees to learn what their own agency was doing? Surely, this would hinder their ability to serve the public.

It looked like SSA was moving in a more positive direction this week as the agency retreated from its position of drastic cuts to the number of services beneficiaries could access over the phone. Had these changes gone into effect, they would have dramatically impact individuals’ ability to access their earned benefits. A deluge of phone calls from beneficiaries and heat from members of Congress forced SSA to change their course.

After SSA’s retreat on phone services, advocates and members of Congress may have thought that their efforts could have been, at least for the moment, deployed somewhere else. Sadly, this is not the case. The decision to move all public communications to X demonstrated that that Trump and Musk are focused on destroying Social Security. Supporters of Social Security cannot let up for one minute. They will need to fight every day for Social Security until January 20, 2029.

Martin Burns resides with his wife Mary Liz in Washington, D.C. Most recently, he was on the campaign trail for Harris-Walz in Pennsylvanian and North Carolina. He has worked as a congressional aide, journalist, and lobbyist and is a member of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and a member of the National Writers Union.