Things are getting more and more out of control as the days go on in the Trump 2.0 misadministration. We are a little over seven months into this four-year sentence that we’re serving collectively and the Social Security Administration Chief Data Officer (and whistleblower) Charles Borges, just involuntarily resigned in a blazing email. Mark this incident well. The kind of media coverage that this gets, or doesn’t get, will end up being the litmus test for how cowed the mainstream media is by Trump, and what you can expect going forward.
From: Charles Borges, Chief Data Officer, Social Security Administration
To: Frank Bisignano, Commissioner, Social Security Administration
Subj: Forced Resignation from Social Security Administration
I am regretfully involuntarily leaving my position at the Social Security Administration (SSA). This involuntary resignation is the result of SSA’s actions against me, which make my duties impossible to perform legally and ethically, have caused me serious attendant mental, physical, and emotional distress, and constitute a constructive discharge.
After reporting internally to management and externally to regulators serious data security and integrity concerns impacting our citizens’ most sensitive personal data, I have suffered exclusion, isolation, internal strife, and a culture of fear, creating a hostile work environment and making work conditions intolerable.
I have served this Country for almost my entire adult life, first as an Active-Duty Naval Officer for over 22 years, and now as a civil servant. I was deployed during 9/11, decorated for valor in combat during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and graduated from US Naval Test Pilot School. As a civil servant, I have served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow, in the Centers for Disease Control during COVID, within OMB on the Federal CIO Data Team, and now serve as the SSA Chief Data Officer (CDO). I have served in each of these roles with honor and integrity.
As the SSA CDO, I am responsible for providing oversight and Governance to ensure the safety, integrity, and security of the public’s data at SSA. My position requires full visibility into data access and exchange across all SSA systems and environments. My duties include ensuring compliance with federal data privacy, security, and regulatory requirements, as well as ensuring data is handled in accordance with internal and external policies, standards, and industry best practices. SSA data is among the most sensitive data in the Federal Government, and the CDO must be well informed about all sensitive data exchanges, storage implementations, and data access concerns.
Recently, I have been made aware of several projects and incidents which may constitute violations of federal statutes or regulations, involve the potential safety and security of high value data assets in the cloud, possibly provided unauthorized or inappropriate access to agency enterprise data storage solutions, and may involve unauthorized data exchange with other agencies. As these events evolved, newly installed leadership in IT and executive offices created a culture of panic and dread, with minimal information sharing, frequent discussions on employee termination, and general organizational dysfunction. Executives and employees are afraid to share information or concerns on questionable activities for fear of retribution or termination, and repeated requests by me for visibility into these events have been rebuffed or ignored by agency leadership, with some employees directed not to reply to my queries.
As a result of these events, I am put in the intolerable situation of not having visibility or oversight into activities that potentially violate statutes and regulations which I, as the CDO, may legally or otherwise be held accountable for should I continue in this position. Additionally, I cannot verify that agency data is being used in accordance with legal agreements or in compliance with federal requirements. The escalating and relentless daily stress of lack of visibility and exclusion from decision-making on these activities, silence from leadership, and anxiety and fear over potential illegal actions resulting in the loss of citizen data, is more than a reasonable employee could bear.
I started this position with high hopes and aspirations for continuing to serve our country and its citizens. However, due to my concerns regarding SSA’s questionable and potentially unlawful data management practices, and the inability to exercise my statutory duties as CDO, I believe my position is untenable and that this constitutes an intolerable working environment for a Chief Executive tasked with specific responsibilities and accountability. Please consider this letter my notice of resignation from SSA, effective immediately.
Very Respectfully, Charles Borges
Chief Data Officer, Social Security Administration
This is horrifying to see this at all. To see this in the beginning of a new presidential term is not only unprecedented, it is a harbinger of grim things to come. This is a direct result of the scare tactics that are in place during this administration, the atmosphere of “panic and dread” spoken of. This is Project 2025 at work, cleaning out the best civil servants that we have working in government and replacing them with Trump loyalists who are only too happy to burn it all down to the ground.
Borges’ blistering email comes on the heels of other high-profile public resignations, like that of multiple directors at Centers for Disease Control (CDC) after the attempted firing of Susan Monarez by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Daniel Jernigan, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, and Debra Houry, Deputy Director and Chief Medical Officer, all submitted letters of resignation this week.
“The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning,” Daskalakis wrote in his resignation letter that he also shared on X. “My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud. I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions’ words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur. I reject his and his colleagues’ thoughts and prayers, and advise they direct those to people that they have not actively harmed.”
These public acts of bravery are admirable. But the fact that many of the people with any integrity left in federal leadership are being forced out does not bode well for hopes of further opposition from within.
This is what America signed up for when it invited back the worst American president in our history to take yet another crack at it. This ball got rolling when Borges filed a whistleblower complaint alleging DOGE members recklessly uploaded a copy of an SSA database containing Americans’ highly-sensitive personal information to a vulnerable cloud server. He let us know what had happened and he has been persecuted for that. Whomever takes his place won’t let us know anything. The next thing that we will know will be whatever catastrophic fallout which will result.
This is our latest wakeup call. I pray that we heed it because it might well be our last.
Hang onto your hat, people.
Words fail me to express how much this news scares me. It’s almost like we don’t have a chance at getting things done right when people are resigning in droves and we will pay the price. We can come back from some of this damage, but with Medicaid on the chopping block and Social Security threatened, this is a BIG DEAL. I can’t imagine the outcome of any of this.
The tragedy of good people being forced to leave is that they will be replaced by, at best, people with limited depth of experience and, more likely, by quislings, go-alongs and know nothings, rats all. Bad rapidly becoming awful. And less than a year in. This cohort will be well embedded as and when a properly constituted constitutional administration is in place. As to how these 5th columnists will be winkled out by that more honorable administration, I have no answer. T’s damage even to this stage will be long lasting.
As disturbing as it may be to consider, about the only option that will be available to that “more honorable administration” will be to act–at least in the early days–in the same manner as this current fascist assemblage has done.
If the current group are so fond of “loyalty tests” and “rounding up the disloyal,” let them enjoy the fruits of their behavior. If they can’t prove their loyalty to the new administration (and living under daily scrutiny to ensure that loyalty), then let them be fired or resign on the spot. They’ll get no sympathy from even the most liberal/progressive of people. And they can always be replaced by the people forced out by Drumpf and his vile cohorts.