A Trump official has been forced into a humiliating climb-down after trying to make life more difficult for the parents of newborns in a state whose governor is feuding with the president.
The acting Social Security commissioner on Thursday announced that Maine parents would not be able to register their newborns for a social security number at the hospital, sparking an immediate backlash.
But less than 24 hours later, Lee Dudek reversed course and apologized.
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“In retrospect, I realize that ending these contracts created an undue burden on the people of Maine, which was not the intent. For that, I apologize,” Lee Dudek said in a statement.
Dudek offered no explanation for his move, but Trump recently attacked Maine Governor Janet Mills for refusing to comply with his order banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports.
“See you in court‚" Mills said in response to Trump’s threat to strip the state of its federal funding.
It’s unclear why the Enumeration at Birth (EAB) program, available in all states since 1997, was halted, although it may have been targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, with Musk himself calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”
Dudek, a mid-level employee at the Social Security Administration until three weeks ago, was elevated to acting commissioner by Trump after he was initially placed on leave for helping DOGE infiltrate the administration.
In a now deleted LinkedIn post, he wrote, “I confess. I bullied agency executives, shared executive contact information, and circumvented the chain of command to connect DOGE with the people who get stuff done.”
The post apparently caught Trump’s eye, who then appointed Dudek as acting commissioner, putting him in charge of overseeing the monthly benefits for more than 70 million people.
Martin O’Malley, who headed the Social Security Administration from 2023 to 2024, recently warned that social security checks could stop going out within 30 to 90 days.
Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized Dudek’s appointment to the post in a scathing letter to him.
“The circumstances of your appointment raise questions about the truthfulness of President Trump’s assertion that ‘Social Security will not be touched [by DOGE],” she wrote.
Thursday’s decision to cancel the EAB program was widely criticized, with advocates for pediatrics in Maine calling the move as unnecessary, unfair and burdensome. The Electronic Death Registry program (EDR), which automatically shares death records with Social Security, was also canceled before being reinstated on Friday.
When the Daily Beast reached out to Dudek’s press office for comment, it referred the Beast back to the press release without offering any further explanation for the move.
