BREAKING: Donald Trump and Elon Musk stab senior citizens in the back as the Social Security Administration ends the ability for Americans to verify their identity over the phone — instead requiring online authentication or in-person visits.

This is going to be absolutely devastating…

The Social Security Administration announced that anyone seeking benefit claims or changes to their direct deposit must now utilize one of the two aforementioned methods.

“SSA will permit individuals who do not or cannot use the agency’s online my Social Security services to start their claim for benefits on the telephone. However, the claim cannot be completed until the individual’s identity is verified in person,” a post on the SSA website reads.

“The agency therefore recommends calling to request an in-person appointment to begin and complete the claim in one interaction,” it continued.

It’s, of course, no secret that many seniors are internet-illiterate, having not been raised with computers in their homes. Similarly, many of them are incapable of driving at this point in their lives and have no means of coming in for in-person visits.

This change is designed to cripple the SSA by making it unusable for vast swathes of the population — paving the way for Elon Musk’s dream of gutting and privatizing Social Security entirely.

The changes will go into full effect on March 31st and over 72 million Americans will be affected. As if that weren’t enough, DOGE plans to shut down a staggering 47 Social Security field offices.

There is no legitimate reason for these changes beyond crippling the SSA, a longstanding goal of the plutocratic Republican Party. DOGE claims that the goal is tamp down on fraud, but Musk himself has been relentlessly attacking Social Security itself, so we already know the real goal here.

Without Social Security, 40% of American seniors or roughly 15 million people, would be living below the poverty line. If Trump and Musk get their way, these vulnerable individuals could die penniless on the streets.

Social Security ‘Clawback’ Change Could Bankrupt Seniors

As Trump and Musk target Social Security, the administration says it will cut off whole checks to seniors who receive an accidental overpayment

At 5 p.m. on Friday, March 7, Donald Trump’s Social Security Administration (SSA) announced a change in policy that could easily bankrupt some of the program’s senior beneficiaries. The agency will now revert back to a more punishing policy that some Republican members of Congress previously publicly opposed — a policy that makes seniors bear the costs of the government’s mistakes.

The rule change will result in Social Security payments being stopped entirely to Americans who receive overpayments from the agency, until the balance is recouped. The change could devastate some program recipients, which is why some Republican members of Congress were against a previous iteration of the policy. Overpayments are often the result of mistakes by the agency, a 2024 Congressional Research Service study found, although the exact percentage of overpayments that are fraud compared to error was not reported.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a conservative Trump ally, warned in 2023 that having a 100 percent “clawback” rate — where the agency withholds 100 percent of a beneficiary’s payments until past overpayments are rectified — “would bankrupt an untold number of elderly Floridians.”

“Social Security needs to be held accountable for these errors, not Florida seniors,” Scott said in a 2023 letter to the agency.

Scott and others have been silent since the SSA announced it would return to a policy of withholding seniors’ entire checks if overpayments occur — even if the improper payments are the fault of the agency itself.

The policy change, which will go into effect on March 27, is a rollback of a Biden administration change made last year under former Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley. The Democrat and former Maryland governor says that the vast majority of overpayments don’t come from fraud, but from agency errors or incidental failure of beneficiaries to report new income or jobs.

The only way to avoid having to pay back overpayments is to request a waiver by either calling an 800 number or visiting a field office, which are now being closed across the country.