UChicago Trustee Antonio Gracias (J.D. ’98) is working at the Social Security Administration (SSA) as a representative of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency Service (DOGE), per the New York Times.
Gracias is a close friend of Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX executive who now serves as a senior advisor to President Donald Trump and a special government employee. Gracias campaigned with Musk in Wisconsin on March 30 at a major rally for Republican state supreme court candidate Brad Schimel.
At the rally, Gracias delivered a presentation on what he called “tremendous fraud” at SSA, which provides retirement and disability benefits to almost 69 million Americans and accounted for 21 percent of the federal budget in 2024.
Gracias is currently serving his first five-year term on the University of Chicago Board of Trustees, which he joined in 2021. He also serves on the board of UChicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.
Gracias serves as a director at SpaceX and previously served as a director at Tesla from 2007 to 2021. Valor Equity Partners—where Gracias is the founder and CEO—invests in both companies, and much of Gracias’s $2.2 billion personal net worth is held in Tesla stock.
“I have worked closely with Elon for over 20 years,” Gracias wrote on X on January 23. “His heart is pure, and his sole mission is to help humanity. During the darkest moments, he has shown me the path to choose courage and compassion over fear and hate.”
Both Tesla and SpaceX—and by extension Musk—receive billions of dollars in federal contracts. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference on February 5 that Musk would be trusted with identifying his own conflicts of interest.
Musk’s role at DOGE is unclear. Though media reports often attribute DOGE’s actions to Musk, and though Musk has attended Trump’s cabinet meetings and received Department of Defense briefings, DOGE’s official acting administrator is Amy Gleason.
Gracias’s role in the Trump administration is similarly unclear. Following his arrival at DOGE, Gracias joined the SSA alongside eight other DOGE employees.
In a February 7 interview on the All-In podcast, co-hosted by Trump A.I. and crypto czar David Sacks (J.D. ’98), Gracias characterized his own role at DOGE as being “in and out a little bit and trying to help where I can, but I’m not there full-time.”
During Sunday’s Wisconsin rally, Gracias said, “I have been from D.C. to Social Security offices to the border to track [Social Security fraud] down.”
At the Wisconsin rally, Gracias displayed a graph that purported to show 2 million “New Non-Citizen Social Security Numbers Issued” for 2024. “These are non-citizens that are getting Social Security numbers,” he said. “This literally blew us away. We went [to the SSA] to find fraud and found this by accident.”
“You [only need to] show a medical bill and a school ID” to get a Social Security number, Gracias said. “From there, you get on the voter rolls, and then Dem[ocrat] operatives will farm the vote,” Musk added. While some municipalities have legalized noncitizen voting in local elections, there is no evidence of widespread voting by noncitizens in federal elections.
In meetings with senior staff, SSA Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has referred to Gracias and other DOGE staffers as “outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs,” per a March 6 Washington Post article.
Despite DOGE staffers’ lack of experience, “I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions,” Dudek told senior SSA staff.
Though the White House said on March 11 that the Trump administration and Elon Musk “will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,” Musk has called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
SSA has faced repeated website crashes, long hold times, and the closure of many regional offices since Trump took office, as the Washington Post reported on March 25.
Neither DOGE nor Gracias could be reached for comment. The White House declined to comment.
When asked whether UChicago’s Board of Trustees was aware of Gracias’s role at DOGE and whether the University had any policies around Trustees’ political activities, a representative of the Board directed the Maroon to a University spokesperson.
A statement from the spokesperson did not confirm whether the Trustees know about Gracias’s role at DOGE. “The Board of Trustees follow the responsibilities outlined in the University of Chicago’s governing documents [and] adhere to the University’s conflict of interest policy for Trustees and Officers,” the statement read.
For Gracias, Social Security fraud is part of a broader problem.
On the All-In podcast, Gracias said that he thought more than 10 percent of the federal budget was fraud. “You’re talking about $650 billion, $1 trillion in waste,” he said.
And at the Wisconsin rally, Gracias said that because millions of undocumented immigrants were receiving Social Security, Medicaid, and other federal financial assistance, human trafficking and cartel activity were increasing rapidly.
Undocumented immigrants are generally ineligible for Medicaid and other federal benefit programs despite paying billions in federal taxes.
SSA did not respond to a request for comment.
Gracias has undergone a political transformation in the past decade. He donated to Democratic presidential primary candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2007 and to Obama again in 2012, per Federal Election Commission records reviewed by the Maroon.
He supported Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and gave almost $500,000 to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee in the 2020 election. Both candidates ran against Trump.
In 2022, Gracias donated to Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick (R-Pa.). In 2024, he donated millions to McCormick, Elon Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC, and the POLARIS National Security PAC, formed to “[h]elp elect conservatives to Congress who will stop Joe Biden’s dangerous foreign policy and fight for American Greatness.”
However, Gracias also donated in 2024 to the reelection campaigns of Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Representative Jim Himes (D-Conn.).
Musk, for his part, contributed $277 million to Trump and other Republican candidates in 2024.
Editor’s Note, April 7, 10:30 a.m.: This article has been updated to clarify the context around the University’s statement in response to questions from the Maroon
