Memphis, Tennessee

Logging on to her Social Security account one day this summer, Rebekah Walker saw no sign of her monthly disability check. In its place, she found a notice informing her that her benefits had been frozen. Acccording to the website, it was Walker who owed Social Security, not the other way around: she owed the system nearly $50,000 in past overpayments.

Mystified but hoping to set things right, she went to her local Social Security field office. There she took a number, and, after a half-hour wait, learned that disputes like hers would need to be taken to a claims specialist, and the first available appointment with one was two weeks away.

Walker, 41, has complex heart abnormalities and a single functioning lung. A divorced mother of three, she works part-time at a law office, but depends on her disability benefits to make ends meet. “At this point, I’m crying and I’m shaking,” she told New York Times reporter Tara Siegel Berrnard.

As a short-term fix, Walker borrowed from friends to cover the rent while she waited to clarify the situation. “No one could explain how they came up with that number,” she told the Capital & Main financial news site. “But my rent is due. My medication doesn’t wait.”

One thing about her case is already clear: like millions of other Social Security recipients, Walker has been experiencing the effects of the Trump administration’s budget cuts. Her Tennessee field office lost three staffers as a result of an early round of cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Four more employees were reassigned to phone duty, creating long lines and six-week waits for new-card appointments.

In March, DOGE approved a plan to cut a total of 7,000 of the agency’s positions – more than 12% of its national workforce. That would mean closing some regional offices altogether. Analysts called it the largest staffing reduction in the agency’s history.

Seven months later, the system remained badly overtaxed, with ongoing website crashes, phone-line failures, and a pileup of unaddressed appeals.

“It’s like the rug was pulled out from under me,” Walker told The New Republic in late September.

“In my 24 years, I have never seen it so bad to the point that a lot of us are medicated,” one Social Security staffer said, speaking anonymously to the Times. “We joke about it, because what else can you do?”