By Sam Janesch
February 11, 2025
Senator Angela Alsobrooks speaks at a rally against DOGE and possible Interference with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The rally was held outside of the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn.
A 35-year veteran of the Social Security Administration who works out of its headquarters in Woodlawn, Shelley Washington describes himself as “the guy that makes sure grandma gets her check.” He’s the one, he said, who gets the call at 2 a.m. if the system goes down.
A potential mass exodus of his colleagues because of President Donald Trump’s steps to slash the federal workforce isn’t just destabilizing for his office — it’s a moment he believes could upend a service he’s dedicated his career to and that millions of people rely on.
“I’m a lifer,” said Washington, a systems programmer and expert on the agency’s batch production software. “I know nothing else but this, so it’s very scary.”
Washington was among about 150 public officials, retirees and workers who rallied outside the headquarters Monday afternoon to protest a slew of actions from Trump, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency in recent weeks. Those include several moves to reduce the federal workforce and, in recent days, attempts to infiltrate the Treasury Department system that handles Social Security benefits and tax refunds.
A federal judge temporarily blocked DOGE’s access to that system over the weekend after Maryland joined 18 other states in suing Trump.
The president and his government efficiency czar have said they’re not aiming to stop entitlement payments, only to save money and eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” across government. But Democrats and some benefits recipients said Monday their actions threaten nearly every part of how Social Security functions.
At the very least, beneficiaries’ private bank accounts and other personal information could be exposed, they said. At worst, an agency with already low staffing levels could be eroded to the point of not being able to function properly.
Washington, who in addition to his work at Social Security also leads the local union representing some of its workers, said he believes 3 percent to 5 percent of the 7,000 employees at the Woodlawn headquarters have already filed paperwork to retire or resign since Trump took office. The stress has been too much, and they’re opting to be proactive by stepping away at a time when no one knows what will come next, he said.
“We already are in a customer service crisis,” Rich Couture, president of the American Federation of Government Employees council representing some Social Security employees, said in an interview after the rally. “This would lead to an entire collapse of public service from Social Security.”
Musk, for his part, has said his efforts are intended to ensure the government has a full grasp of what it’s paying. In a post on X on Saturday, he claimed there are $50 billion to $100 billion in fraudulent entitlement payments to individuals per year, though he did not specify where those figures came from or if they are even correct.
“If accurate, this is extremely suspicious,” he wrote.
Retirees at the rally Monday chanted, waved handmade signs and screamed out in worry during a series of speeches by Maryland elected officials.
“Keep your forking hands off our $$$$,” read one sign, referring to the “fork in the road” email that went out to millions of federal workers two weeks ago asking them to resign with seven months of paid leave. “Nobody elected Elon Musk” and “Hands off our Social Security” read others.
“It’s like being invaded,” Carol Goldstein, an 83-year-old retired nurse from Towson, said in an interview about Musk’s team trying to gain access to the payments system.
Debra Brown, 71, of Pikesville, said she was “scared to death” about what it could mean for her and others’ personal information.
“What are they going to do with it? Why do they want it?” said Brown, a retired social worker. “I’m just thinking of all the bad things that are going to happen.”
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who served as head of all of Social Security operations during most of President Joe Biden’s last year in office, said during the rally that DOGE’s moves haven’t been aimed at government efficiency but at “stealing the personal data of Americans and … taking a lifetime of earned benefits, your Social Security benefits, and turning it into a Bitcoin bank.”
Other Democrats — who for weeks have raised alarms about the potential impacts to Maryland if some of the roughly 160,000 federal workers in the state are eliminated — similarly targeted Musk.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen called his actions “a recipe for corruption by the DOGE boys.” U.S. Angela Alsobrooks called them part of Trump’s “wicked hunt for vengeance.”
Others framed the moment as a new stage in a battle that, just three weeks into Trump’s second administration, will carry through to the 2026 midterm elections and beyond.
U.S. Rep. Johnny Olszewski, Jr., of Baltimore County, said that after a year of talking about Project 2025 — the conservative agenda developed by Trump’s allies for his new term — Monday was “the start of Project 2026, where those who stand by quietly … will be held accountable in this next election.” U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume put it in the context of his half-century-long fight for civil rights.
“This fight is not for the feeble. It is not for the faithless,” the Baltimore Democrat said. “This will be a congressional fight, a constitutional fight, a legal fight and, on days like this, a street fight.”
U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, who represents the Eastern Shore and is Maryland’s only Republican in Congress, did not respond to a request for comment Monday.