A federal judge on Thursday issued a preliminary injunction blocking Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the personal records of millions of Americans held by the Social Security Administration (SSA). U.S. District Judge Ellen L. Hollander, an Obama appointee, delivered a sharply worded 148-page ruling in favor of left-wing unions and advocacy groups, prioritizing privacy concerns over government access. This comes despite the Trump administration’s argument that the data was essential for uncovering fraud, waste, and abuse within the nation’s vast entitlement system.
DOGE has undertaken a sweeping effort to clean up irregularities in the Social Security database, already flagging over 7 million individuals listed as 120 years or older as officially deceased. Officially, the DOGE X account posted: “For the past 3 weeks, SocialSecurity has been executing a major cleanup of their records. Approximately 7 million numberholders, all listed age 120+, have now been marked as deceased. Another ~5 million to go.”
In February, Musk revealed in a post on X that millions of individuals in the Social Security database are listed as centenarians, with their “death field set to FALSE!” — suggesting there is a very large number of fraudulent claims being paid out every month. “According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE! Maybe Twilight is real, and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk posted, adding a couple of rolling-on-the-floor laughing emojis.
According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!
Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security ?? pic.twitter.com/ltb06VX98Z
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025
Musk’s post includes a chart showing that over 20 million individuals in the Social Security database are recorded as being 100 years or older. The data indicates more than 3.9 million people listed in the 130-139 age range, over 3.5 million in the 140-149 range, and more than 1.3 million in the 150-159 range. While the 2020 U.S. Census recorded a total population of over 331 million, the number of individuals aged 100 and older was just over 80,000, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
