A midnight Friday deadline is looming for the U.S. Senate to pass a federal funding bill to avert a government shutdown.

"Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency,” said interim SSA Commissioner Lee Dudek.

The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner wants to shut down the SSA temporarily following a judge’s order to halt access to the agency’s data by staff of the entity known as the Department of Government Efficiency,

The Trump administration is threatening to all but shut down the Social Security Administration in response to a judge’s ruling blocking activities by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — an action that could delay payments to millions of beneficiaries caught in the middle of the legal battle.