Gizmodo: “Key parts of the Social Security website have proven inaccessible over the past week, and the agency now says that it is probing the cause of the service disruptions. The problems come not long after the agency compelled retirees to seek help more exclusively online, as it attempts to downsize its phone operations. Last week, the Washington Post reported that the agency’s website had crashed “four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts.” Now, the agency has responded, claiming that’s not quite the case. “There have been a couple of recent incidents impacting ‘My Social Security’ and we are actively investigating the root cause,” SSA spokeswoman Nicole Tiggemann told the Associated Press. Tiggemann claimed that the website was still operational during the incidents but that “some people may have experienced a problem signing in to their personal ‘My Social Security’ account.” The reported problems took place not long after the agency encouraged retirees to reach out for help online and announced the nixing of phone-based identity verification. After much backlash, the agency partially retracted the announced policy change for those retirees applying for Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, or Supplemental Security Income. However, the plan still seems to be to drastically scale down the agency’s phone services, which could have a major impact on Americans’ access to benefits. Newsweek recently reported that the people who would be hit hardest by the changes are Trump’s own voters…”