WASHINGTON (AP) — After complaints about staffing cuts and long waits to get help at the Social Security Administration, its commissioner says he's ready to make the case to Congress this week that things are getting a lot better at the embattled agency.
Frank Bisignano is expected to face pointed questions from lawmakers at a hearing on his agency’s customer service performance, its ability to pay Americans their benefits, protect their privacy, and other questions about the inner workings of the SSA.
He plans to tout shorter wait times and other customer service metrics to a House Ways and Means Committee hearing slated for Wednesday, and slam his predecessor for requiring appointments for field office visits, in a letter to lawmakers viewed by The Associated Press.
In the letter, Bisignano states that the SSA has cut phone wait times by 75% under his leadership, fixed frustrating website issues, and served 50% more people.
“I’ve been very clear. We will meet clients where they want to be met. You want to call us on a phone, we’ll have technology on the phone, or you can talk to somebody on the phone. You want to come to a field office, you can come with an appointment, or without,” Bisignano told The Associated Press in an interview.
Critics argue those gains are being achieved through temporary staffing shifts, increased reliance on online services, and workforce reductions that have created longer-term service risks, shifting bottlenecks around rather than solving staffing problems.
Bisignano dismisses the criticism. “People boo at Yankee Stadium, even when they’re winning,” he said.
Bisignano took over the agency after a series of chaotic customer service changes, leadership exits, and false allegations made by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk — who ran the Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting program — that millions of dead people were receiving benefits.
The SSA cut 7,000 workers at the start of the Trump administration. Roughly 2,000 employees were reassigned last year into direct-service positions, including staff whose jobs don't normally involve answering calls.
The SSA's Inspector General — its internal watchdog — has identified ongoing errors in benefit administration and claims processing. But its latest semiannual report to Congress also shows the agency has made measurable progress in improving telephone service and deploying technology to speed disability claims processing.
The union representing SSA employees and field office workers says some offices are severely understaffed. That includes Ironwood, Michigan; Decorah, Iowa; Havre, Montana; Big Spring, Texas; Sheridan, Wyoming; Glasgow, Montana; Pierre, South Dakota; Cedar City, Utah; and Cody, Wyoming, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Council 220.
But Bisignano said no field offices have been closed and noted that the agency is committed to meeting clients where they prefer.
“What I’m trying to achieve is to have a better way for the American public to interact with the Social Security Administration,” Bisignano said.
Bisignano also serves as chief executive of the IRS, in a role that was created by the Trump administration. Asked about a new tax audit immunity deal for Trump and his family that was part of the controversial settlement crafted to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, Bisignano referred The Associated Press to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent comments to a congressional committee, where he refused comment on ongoing litigation.
FILE - IRS CEO Frank Bisignano testifies during a Senate Committee on Finance hearing on Capitol Hill, April 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
Voters across Maine, Nevada, South Carolina and North Dakota will cast their ballots Tuesday in another day of primary elections in America, but much of the political world will be focused on Maine’s high-stakes U.S. Senate contest.
The results aren't in question. Neither Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins nor Democratic challenger Graham Platner faces serious opposition for their party’s nomination. And yet Tuesday marks an especially significant moment for Platner, the embattled veteran and oyster farmer, who's fighting to rebuild his credibility in a campaign rocked by controversy.
Elsewhere, President Donald Trump’s clout within his party will be tested anew in states like South Carolina and Nevada, where he’s endorsed his favored candidates. Democrats hope to build momentum in Nevada in their broader push to reclaim key governor’s seats.
Here's the latest:
More than a year before filing even opened for this year’s contests, Graham’s campaign said Sen. Tim Scott and Gov. Henry McMaster would chair his 2026 run.
Scott, South Carolina’s junior senator, chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
McMaster is the state’s longest-serving governor, having been elected twice after serving the remaining two years of Nikki Haley’s term after she became Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations.
Democrats and Republicans will pick nominees for governor to replace Mills as the Democrat’s time in office is winding to a close.
It’s a crowded field. Democrats are choosing between Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows; former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson; former Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives Hannah Pingree; energy executive Angus King III; and former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Nirav Shah.
Republicans will choose between former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Bobby Charles; healthcare executive Jonathan Bush; former Maine Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason; University of Maine System trustee Owen McCarthy; former Paris, Maine, selectman Robert Wessels; and businessmen David Jones and Ben Midgley.
Mills is termed out and will appear on the Democratic ballot for U.S. Senate, although she suspended her campaign weeks ago.
As Nevada voters participate in primary elections Tuesday, the state Democratic Party has launched a website — www.thelombardotrumpway.com/ — to highlight GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo’s connections to the White House.
The site is an effort to connect the governor to the economic fallout from Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war. Lombardo is considered one of the most vulnerable governors in the country.
The Democrats vying to challenge Lombardo include state Attorney General Aaron Ford, who has the backing of the Democratic congressional delegation and former Vice President Kamala Harris. He would be the first Black man elected governor of Nevada. He’s facing Democrat Alexis Hill, a county commissioner in northern Nevada who campaigned as a candidate willing to shake things up.
Republicans have held all statewide-elected positions in South Carolina for more than a decade, but several Democrats are competing in primaries Tuesday for some of the state’s top posts.
Annie Andrews, a Charleston pediatrician who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace in 2022, is vying for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Lindsey Graham. Also in that contest is Brandon Brown, a former HBCU vice president and owner of funeral homes in Greenville.
In the governor’s race, state Rep. Jermaine Johnson and Greenville businessman Billy Webster are running in the Democratic primary. They’re joined by Mullins McLeod, an attorney who withstood calls from party leaders that he quit the race following an arrest last year for disorderly conduct.
The South Carolina senator’s bid for a fifth term coincides with the war he’s pushed for years. Graham has a close relationship with Trump and they speak regularly about the conflict.
But as voters mull whether to send Graham back to Washington, they’re also reckoning with the ongoing war, which has caused fissures among some of Trump’s most vocal supporters.
Graham frequently pushes Trump to take even more aggressive action, at one point suggesting that the U.S. military seize Kharg Island, which is critical for Iran’s oil industry.
Rep. Nancy Mace says one of her supporters was assaulted at a Monday event with Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, one of her rivals in South Carolina’s governor’s race.
The man was escorted from Evette’s rally, then walked the sidewalk speaking into a megaphone. Then another man wearing an Evette campaign hat is seen on video grabbing the device from his hands.
Court records show the Evette supporter, Blake Garrison Kirsch, was charged with third-degree assault and battery Tuesday. No attorney was listed. Evette’s campaign said Kirsch was not a staffer and had been removed from the campaign’s finance committee since the altercation.
Asked about the incident Tuesday, Evette told reporters after voting in Taylors she was “saddened” by the situation and doesn’t “tolerate violence on any level.”
Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill faces state Attorney General Aaron Ford, whose fundraising has dwarfed hers —$2.3 million compared to Hill’s $100,000. He also has the support of the entire Democratic congressional delegation and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Hill, a local official in the county that includes Reno, has run a grassroots campaign, promising to shake up the status quo in the Democratic Party. Ford has largely ignored her, fixing his sights on the November election.
The winner will most likely face Republican Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, who's running for reelection.
Brenda Wood said she voted for Republicans in the primary because she doesn’t believe Platner’s campaign promises and expressed dissatisfaction with his party generally.
“I think the Democrats have been a disgrace to Maine for years,” she said.
Annette Babcock, also from Sullivan, said she supported Platner, whom she said she’s met a few times and likes because he’s not an established politician.
She did not sound concerned over recent controversies surrounding his campaign.
“The Republicans don’t have much moral high ground to stand on when they’re criticizing him for what he’s done when Trump is a convicted felon,” she said.
The road for the Democrats to take back the U.S. Senate goes through Maine. That road starts today.
The Democratic Party needs to net four seats to retake the Senate majority, and thinks some of its best chances are in states like Maine, North Carolina, Alaska and Ohio. The party is set to officially pick its nominee in Maine on Tuesday.
Oyster farmer and combat veteran Graham Platner is the party’s presumptive nominee because his main rival, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign weeks ago. Mills remains on the ballot. David Costello, who hasn't campaigned aggressively, is also on the ballot.
After voting at her precinct in Taylors on Tuesday, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette said she was confident about how her campaign for governor had gone.
But if she doesn’t win the primary outright and has to campaign for two more weeks in a runoff, the Republican said she’d work hard to win over voters who didn’t initially support her.
President Donald Trump is backing Evette’s bid and the candidate said that, while she thinks that will help her in this “proud Trump state,” she’ll focus primarily on her own stances, like cutting taxes and regulations.
Platner’s campaign has spent months navigating controversies about a tattoo of a Nazi symbol that he had covered up and his history of inflammatory online postings.
Platner has said he was drunk on leave with some fellow Marines many years ago when he got a skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest. He had it covered up last year after saying he learned that it was a Nazi image.
There has also been much attention on his former social media and Reddit posts, which were dismissive of military sexual assaults, insulting of police and rural residents and used homophobic slurs, for which he's apologized.
Nevada’s primary will give an indication of the influence the president maintains in the battleground state.
In 2024, Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate in 20 years to win Nevada. For Tuesday’s primary, he's backed candidates in three of the state’s four congressional races:
Trump has a string of victories for his endorsed candidates so far this primary season. That includes those he endorsed in an effort to take down Republicans he deemed insufficiently loyal.
The GOP primary for the 2nd District appears to be the most contentious. Trump’s endorsed candidate faces James Settelmeyer, a rancher with a long political resume who has the backing of Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and the retiring incumbent.
Trump’s endorsement is a powerful factor in a state where Republicans dominate politics.
U.S. Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, state Attorney General Alan Wilson and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette all showcased their proximity to the president. Mace worked for his 2016 campaign, Norman votes with him in the House, Wilson traveled to New York City when Trump was on trial, and Evette hired one of his advisers for her campaign.
In the end, Trump endorsed Evette in the primary’s closing days, also saying on social media that “A BIG added plus” was that Henry McMaster Jr. — the sitting governor’s son — could be Evette’s running mate.
McMaster is close to Trump, backing him in 2016 when much of the Republican establishment was hesitant to embrace the New York businessman and reality television star. So when McMaster endorsed Evette in February, it was a sign that Trump’s support could be on the way.
Many Maine Democrats are voting to pick a candidate for the 2nd District, which Republicans see as a key chance to pick up a seat in the narrowly divided chamber.
Incumbent Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, is not seeking reelection. The 2nd District includes much of rural Maine and Trump has had great success there at the top of the ticket in the last three presidential elections.
The Republicans’ presumptive nominee is former Gov. Paul LePage. Democrats will choose between former Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap; state Sen. Joe Baldacci; former U.S. Senate candidate Jordan Wood; and social worker Paige Loud.
The Nevada Secretary of State’s Office has launched a website designed to provide transparency around mail ballots.
The website shows how many were mailed, returned and accepted. It also notes the number requiring fixes by voters. Nevada mails a ballot to every registered voter unless a voter opts out.
It’s one of several swing states where Trump disputed his loss in 2020 with false claims of fraud. The secretary of state at the time, a Republican, investigated various claims and found no evidence of any widespread fraud. Trump also has repeatedly attacked the use of mail ballots generally.
Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, said he created the website to increase transparency around Nevada’s elections and provide a way for voters to see in real-time how many ballots are outstanding.
Lindsay Robinson, with daughter Scottie, walks to cast her ballots in the Maine Primary, Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in Augusta, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Mary Saunders looks over her choices one last time before casting her ballots in the Maine Primary, Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in Augusta, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
