Leland Dudek

Leland "Lee" Dudek (born 1976/1977)Kaplan, Juliana; Reed Alexander, Dakin Campbell
"The future of America's biggest safety net is in the hands of a career bureaucrat and a hard-charging finance titan"
''Business Insider'', April 28, 2025. is an American public servant who served as the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA). Prior to this, he worked for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board and in the SSA's anti-fraud office.

Educated at the Catholic University of America and National Defense University, Dudek worked as an analyst in information technology, cybersecurity, and fraud prevention for the United States federal government.

Dudek provided the Department of Government Efficiency information without authorization and was placed under investigation for it, but President Donald Trump appointed him commissioner. Dudek reduced research funding and demoted executives opposed to him and threatened to cease the SSA's operations. He has feuded with Governor of Maine Janet Mills for comments made to Trump.

Early life

Leland Dudek's parents divorced when he was young and his mother lived off of Social Security benefits due to a disability. Dudek graduated from the Catholic University of America with a Bachelor of Arts degree and the College of Information and Cyberspace at the National Defense University with a Master of Science in Government Information Leadership.

Career

Dudek was given a Certified Information Systems Security Professional certification in 2006. He was the Chief Information Security Officer for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. For 25 years he was an analyst who worked in information technology, cybersecurity and fraud prevention in the United States federal government. He served as a redistricting commissioner for Hyattsville, Maryland, and was a member of the Selective Service System local board.

Social Security Administration

At the Social Security Administration Dudek worked in the anti-fraud office. Dudek was put on leave by SSA leadership for sharing information with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) without authorization, but shortly thereafter President Donald Trump replaced acting commissioner Michelle King with Dudek on February 16, 2025. On Dudek's social media he has praised DOGE.

During Dudek's tenure as acting commissioner he reduced funding for research programs and demoted senior executives who were responsible for him being placed on paid leave. He has proposed digitizing Social Security cards. On March 6, SSA employees were barred from accessing certain sites, including news sites, which hampered their ability to view obituaries, which are used to prevent fraud. He threatened to cease the operations of the SSA after DOGE staffers were blocked from accessing SSA data by a court ruling, but retracted this threat.

In February 2025, Maine Governor Janet Mills told President Donald Trump that she would follow the law after he demanded Maine ban transgender athletes from women's sports, resulting in Trump threatening to remove funding to Maine, while Mills threatened a lawsuit. Later that month, Dudek told Social Security Administration staff to "cancel the contracts" regarding Maine, declaring: "While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child", in reference to Mills.

In March 2025, Maine authorities reported that the Social Security Administration cancelled Maine's contracts for the Enumeration at Birth and Electronic Death Records programs. The Enumeration at Birth program, which was rolled out nationally in 1989, allowed parents to request their newborn children's Social Security numbers at hospitals, and 99% of children received their numbers this way, reported the Social Security Administration. The contract cancellation necessitated Maine parents to travel to a Social Security office to obtain their newborn's Social Security number. When the contract cancellations were made public, no reason was given for the cancellations. Within a week, the Maine contracts were restored, with Dudek saying: "ending these contracts created an undue burden on the people of Maine, which was not the intent. For that, I apologize". Later, Dudek told the media that he ordered the initial change in Maine because: "I was ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president … I screwed up."

In April 2025, ''The Washington Post'' reported that Dudek was persuaded by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to instruct the Social Security Administration to falsely list over 6,000 living immigrants in their database of dead people, despite Dudek's initial belief that this action was illegal.

U.S. Representative Gerry Connolly, the highest ranking Democratic member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Dudek on April 2, calling on him to resign.

Dudek was placed on administrative leave not long after he contested Trump's claim that 40% of the calls at the SSA were fraudulent. On his last day as commissioner on May 6, he wrote an op-ed for the ''New York Post'', praising Trump.

References

Works cited

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{{SSA commissioners

1970s births
Commissioners of the Social Security Administration
Living people
Place of birth missing (living people)
Second Trump administration personnel