Social Security Administration’s latest pre-election message slammed as ‘illegal’

Several Democratic senators wrote to Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano in July with a specific and pressing concern. The agency he leads, they wrote, had sent “unsolicited” messages to Social Security recipients, pushing misleading statements about Donald Trump.

“You are misusing official resources to heap praise on him,” the letter said, adding that the Social Security Administration appeared to be “bombarding Americans with blatantly partisan emails” touting the president.

If Bisignano saw the letter, he apparently didn’t care. The Washington Post reported:

Days before consequential midterm elections, the head of the Social Security Administration blasted out an email to the public praising President Donald Trump.

“Under President Donald J. Trump, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is transforming into a model of excellence, one that meets and exceeds customer expectations for fast, accurate, and secure service,” Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano wrote to people with online Social Security accounts.

A related report in The New York Times added that Bisignano, whom the president also tapped to lead the Internal Revenue Service, also “signed his name on a similar email sent out” by the IRS on Thursday.

Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told the Times the emails seemed to function as “propaganda” rather than as public service announcements providing practical information.

That’s certainly true, though the broader pattern makes matters significantly worse. For example, Bisignano sent a related pro-Trump message to those with online Social Security accounts two weeks ago, specifically celebrating the president by name 10 times and using a Republican-friendly label for the party’s package of tax breaks from last year.

In early July, the Social Security Administration also sent out an unsolicited email celebrating Republican tax breaks — it referred to Trump, by name or title, six times in a five-paragraph email — which followed related political emails to Social Security beneficiaries in July 2025 and August 2025.

Martin O’Malley, who served as the commissioner of the Social Security Administration in the Biden administration, said in a statement to MaddowBlog after this latest incident, “Social Security is being used as a pro-Trump voter contact platform before this election. It is an illegal misuse of the personal data of every American to deliver falsehoods before the election.”

Americans need to be able to rely on ostensibly apolitical federal agencies for accurate information, free of partisan taint. When the public sees Trump rant online or during a media interview, most probably realize it’s best to approach his nonsense with skepticism.

But when people get unsolicited official statements from the Social Security Administration, they should be able to have some confidence that the agency isn’t trying to lobby them with political messaging.

And yet, here we are, watching the SSA join a list of politicized agencies, being used as partisan tools in the White House’s political toolbox.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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