Key parts of the Social Security website have proven inaccessible over the past week, and the agency now says that it is probing the cause of the service disruptions. The problems come not long after the agency compelled retirees to seek help more exclusively online, as it attempts to downsize its phone operations.
Last week, the Washington Post reported that the agency’s website had crashed “four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts.” Now, the agency has responded, claiming that’s not quite the case.
“There have been a couple of recent incidents impacting ‘My Social Security’ and we are actively investigating the root cause,” SSA spokeswoman Nicole Tiggemann told the Associated Press. Tiggemann claimed that the website was still operational during the incidents but that “some people may have experienced a problem signing in to their personal ‘My Social Security’ account.”
The reported problems took place not long after the agency encouraged retirees to reach out for help online and announced the nixing of phone-based identity verification. After much backlash, the agency partially retracted the announced policy change for those retirees applying for Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, or Supplemental Security Income. However, the plan still seems to be to drastically scale down the agency’s phone services, which could have a major impact on Americans’ access to benefits. Newsweek recently reported that the people who would be hit hardest by the changes are Trump’s own voters.
The agency has been on the defensive in recent weeks, as ongoing backlash to its announced policy changes (and the involvement of Elon Musk’s DOGE in those changes) have spurred an outpouring of confusion and anger. Critics believe that DOGE may be intentionally attempting to sabotage the agency in an effort to justify its closure. Meanwhile, Musk has continued to publicly disparage Social Security, spreading lies about the amount of fraud impacting the program. At a political event in Wisconsin this week (where the billionaire is attempting to buy the Supreme Court election), Musk claimed: “One interesting statistic was that 40 percent of the calls into Social Security were fraudulent, meaning that it was someone trying to get a Social Security payment that was going to a senior instead to go to a fraud ring,” a claim that the New York Times has noted has no basis in reality and may in fact be a misunderstanding (or a purposeful skewing) of a different statistic.
The SSA recently disputed the news that it would be closing field offices across the country, despite the fact that DOGE has very publicly listed dozens of SSA field offices on a website dedicated to federal lease terminations. “Recent reports in the media that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is permanently closing local field offices are false. Since January 1, 2025, the agency has not permanently closed or announced the permanent closure of any local field office,” the agency said last week. “From time to time, SSA must temporarily close a local field office for reasons such as weather, damage, or facilities issues, and it reopens when the issues are resolved,” it continued. “The agency has announced the permanent closure of one hearing office, in White Plains, NY.”
The announced closure of the White Plains office is actually quite a big deal, as it is one of the largest in New York state, and is the only one in the county of Westchester (which has a population of approximately a million people). “SSA identified for the General Services Administration underutilized office space to ensure the government is spending taxpayer money as prudently as possible. The agency provided GSA a list of sites for termination,” the statement continues, seeming to admit that—contrary to what it just said—it is planning on closing numerous SSA offices. “Most of these are small hearing rooms with no assigned employees. Since most hearings are held virtually, SSA no longer needs these underutilized rooms.”
Social security activists have said that the changes ushered in under DOGE’s watch will lead to deaths, and former federal officials have been highly critical of the government’s new approach to the nearly 100-year-old program. The agency’s former commissioner, Martin O’Malley, has claimed that the changes instituted could lead to large-scale service disruptions as soon as June.
