Best Of: Growing Up Murdoch / DOGE's Cuts To The Federal Workforce

Summary

Fresh Air Weekend – Episode Summary Release Date: March 1, 2025

Host: Dave Davies
Guests:

• McKay Coppins, Staff Writer for The Atlantic
• John Powers, Film Critic
• Elizabeth Linos, Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor of Public Policy and Management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government

---

1. Growing Up Murdoch: The Battle for a Media Empire

Timestamp: [00:17] – [26:45]

Overview: In a compelling exploration of familial power struggles, Dave Davies delves into the high-stakes succession drama within the Murdoch family. Drawing parallels to the acclaimed HBO series Succession, Davies interviews McKay Coppins, whose investigative work in The Atlantic unveils the intense rivalry among Rupert Murdoch's children over control of his vast media empire.

Key Points:

• Rupert Murdoch's Succession Plan:
  Rupert Murdoch, the 93-year-old media mogul, attempted to secure control of his empire for his elder son, Lachlan Murdoch, leading to a fierce legal battle with his younger son, James Murdoch, and his siblings. (Davies, [02:43]).

• Family Dynamics and Betrayal:
  The trial revealed deep-seated family tensions, manipulation, and betrayal, with James and his sister Liz challenging Rupert's plans. McKay Coppins highlights how these personal conflicts exposed painful family secrets. (Coppins, [04:38] – [11:50]).

• Ideological Clashes:
  James Murdoch's more moderate and liberal stance contrasted sharply with Lachlan's alignment with Rupert's traditional conservative views, especially evident during the Trump era. This ideological divide further strained their relationship and impacted the direction of Fox News. (Coppins, [10:02] – [22:50]).

• Courtroom Emotional Toll:
  The high-profile court battle took an emotional toll on James Murdoch, who expressed profound sadness over the fracturing of his family. During his testimony, he was unexpectedly moved to tears, showcasing the personal cost of corporate conflicts. (Coppins, [19:07] – [26:44]).

• Outcome and Future Implications:
  The court ruled against Rupert's attempt to alter the family trust, favoring an egalitarian distribution of control among the siblings. However, with Rupert's advanced age, the battle is far from over, and further attempts to sideline James may emerge. (Coppins, [20:54] – [26:45]).

Notable Quotes:

• McKay Coppins:
  “Fox News could still report from a conservative perspective without... platforming quack doctors who rail against vaccines.”
  (Timestamp: [22:50])

• James Murdoch:
  “I didn't think that I would get that emotional... there was something just so fundamentally sad about what had happened to his family.”
  (Timestamp: [19:18])

---

2. Film Review: Flow – An Animated Masterpiece

Timestamp: [26:45] – [32:17]

Overview: John Powers offers an enthusiastic review of Flow, an acclaimed animated film from Latvia. Highlighting its artistic merit and emotional depth, Powers compares Flow to works by Studio Ghibli and Pixar, emphasizing its unique storytelling and visual elegance.

Key Points:

• Narrative and Themes:
  Flow tells the story of a diverse group of animals navigating a catastrophic flood, symbolizing the ever-changing nature of life and the importance of solidarity. The film subtly addresses themes like climate change without being overtly political. (Powers, [27:32] – [32:17]).

• Animation and Production:
  Created using open-source software Blender on a modest budget of $3.7 million, Flow distinguishes itself with kinetic elegance and immersive visuals, standing out from mainstream Hollywood animations. (Powers, [29:00] – [31:00]).

• Critical Acclaim:
  The film has garnered awards from the Golden Globes, New York and Los Angeles film critics, and received Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best International Film. (Powers, [31:00] – [32:17]).

Notable Quotes:

• John Powers:
  “Flow captures the way animals behave in the wild... the movie weaves together bursts of adventure with poetic moments of transcendence.”
  (Timestamp: [27:32])

• John Powers:
  “Flo is conceived as a universal story that weaves together magic and realism... it's a classic fable about learning to adapt to life's ever changing flow.”
  (Timestamp: [32:17])

---

3. DOGE's Cuts to the Federal Workforce: Impacts and Implications

Timestamp: [32:17] – [52:36]

Overview: In a critical analysis of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Dave Davies converses with Harvard's Elizabeth Linos about the drastic measures taken to reduce the federal workforce. The discussion highlights the potential socioeconomic and operational repercussions of these actions on government services and local communities.

Key Points:

• DOGE's Mandate and Actions:
  Under Elon Musk's leadership, DOGE has aggressively targeted the federal workforce, resulting in thousands of dismissals, contract terminations, and attempts to eliminate government agencies. (Davies, [33:34] – [36:30]).

• Public Payroll Realities vs. Perceptions:
  Contrary to claims of a bloated federal payroll, Linos explains that the federal workforce has remained stable since the 1960s, representing about 6% of the federal budget. The assumption that many federal employees are inefficient is unfounded. (Linos, [35:26] – [36:21]).

• Impact of Buyouts and Layoffs:
  DOGE's initial buyout offer led to approximately 75,000 resignations, aligning with natural retirement rates. This indicated that federal employees are generally committed and not merely waiting for exits. (Linos, [36:30] – [38:20]).

• Authoritarian Management Tactics:
  Musk's directive for employees to list weekly accomplishments under threat of resignation reflects a hostile management approach, undermining trust and morale within the federal workforce. (Linos, [38:49] – [40:22]).

• Consequences for Government Services:
  The reduction in workforce threatens the efficiency and reliability of essential services, such as the VA healthcare system and IRS operations, potentially leading to longer processing times and decreased service quality. (Linos, [43:14] – [49:56]).

• Economic and Community Impact:
  With 80% of federal workers residing outside Washington, D.C., layoffs are poised to adversely affect local economies across the country, disrupting communities and reducing economic stability. (Linos, [47:24] – [48:24]).

• Future Outlook and Democratic Threats:
  Linos warns of the broader implications for democracy, including the potential replacement of nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists, which could erode the integrity and functionality of government institutions. (Linos, [48:33] – [51:25]).

Notable Quotes:

• Elizabeth Linos:
  “Anyone who's receiving that type of email from their boss is getting the message that they are not wanted and they are not valued.”
  (Timestamp: [38:49])

• Elizabeth Linos:
  “We're starting to hear more about cuts for the IRS... that's going to affect the local economy in a way that affects everyone who lives there.”
  (Timestamp: [47:24])

• Elizabeth Linos:
  “The largest threat to democracy overall, which is that we're going to see a replacement of professional, nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists.”
  (Timestamp: [48:33])

Implications:

• Service Disruptions:
  Immediate effects include reduced efficiency in vital government services, impacting public trust and daily operations.

• Economic Strain:
  Communities dependent on federal workers face economic downturns, affecting local businesses and livelihoods.

• Long-Term Democratic Risks:
  Centralizing power within DOGE and undermining the merit-based civil service could weaken democratic institutions and accountability.

---

Conclusion: This episode of Fresh Air Weekend offers an in-depth look into two significant contemporary issues: the tumultuous succession battle within the Murdoch family and the controversial workforce reductions orchestrated by Elon Musk's DOGE. Through engaging conversations with experts like McKay Coppins and Elizabeth Linos, the show illuminates the intricate interplay between family dynamics, corporate power, and governmental integrity, while also celebrating artistic achievements in the film industry.

Transcript

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[Dave Davies]

From WHYYN Philadelphia, this is FRESH AIR weekend. I'm Dave Davies. Today, a real life succession drama. Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins describes the rivalry among the children of 93 year old media titan Rupert Murdoch over who will control his business empire when he passes from the scene. Murdoch's effort to ensure his elder son Lachlan inherits the throne led to a no holds barred legal brawl that unearthed painful family stories of manipulation and betrayal. Also, we'll talk with Harvard professor Elizabeth Linos about the extraordinary measures Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or doge, has taken to shrink the size of the federal government and what that means for federal workers and the rest of us who depend on government services. And John Powers reviews the animated film Flow, which he says is wonderful. That's coming up on FRESH AIR weekend.

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[Dave Davies]

I'm Dave Davies. If you enjoyed the HBO series Succession about the children of an aging media mogul competing to inherit his business empire, you'll want to read the new article in the Atlantic by my guest, McKay Coppins. It's about the real life drama involving the children of 93 year old Rupert Murdoch and their battle over who will someday lead his business properties, most prominently Fox News. And even if you didn't see Succession, the story is still fascinating, both because of the intense family dynamics and the stakes in this conflict. The the outcome could mean big changes for Fox News, which Coppens describes as the most powerful conservative media force in the world. Late last year, the parties in this family dispute squared off in an epic court battle over the succession plan for the Murdoch empire. Rupert Murdoch wanted to amend the family trust to ensure his eldest son Lachlan would take the helm, shutting out his younger son James, who was troubled by Fox News hard right bent. Coppens writes that the trial testimony and depositions and discovery in the case were often intensely personal, bringing up years of painful secrets, scheming and manipulation, lies, media leaks and devious betrayals. For his story, Coppens had extensive interviews with James Murdoch and his wife Catherine. Their side prevailed in the trial verdict, which is under appeal. McKay Coppins is a staff writer for the Atlantic and the author of two books, the Wilderness, about the battle over the future of the Republican Party and A Reckoning, a biography of Mitt Romney. The online version of his new article is Growing Up Murdoch, James Murdoch on Mind Games, Sibling rivalry, and the War for the Family Media Empire. It's on the Atlantic's website and it's also the magazine's April issue cover story. Well, McKay Coppins, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

[McKay Coppins]

Thanks for having me.

[Dave Davies]

All right. Well, let's talk about this story, the Murdoch story. I mean, Rupert Murdoch actually inherited a newspaper from his dad, who had an interesting background in journalism. And then he went off on this swashbuckling campaign to acquire one paper and then use the leverage on that to get another and another. And at the time he was 40, he was the most powerful media owner in Australia. He moves to the United Kingdom and buys tabloids and eventually a broadsheet there, eventually ends up in the States where he gets the Wall Street Journal and starts Fox News, which was a big success. I wouldn't normally assume that someone who owns media businesses would necessarily want his kids to get involved in the family business. They resources, they could get educations, do whatever they want. Did Rupert Murdoch consciously try to Bring his children, get them interested in the media.

[McKay Coppins]

Yeah. By all accounts, he was quite aggressive about it. In fact, he insisted on treating News Corp. Even as it expanded and became a publicly traded company, like a family business. Almost like, you know, kids living above the shop. Right. He was always looking for opportunities to draw his kids into his professional world. At breakfast, the legend goes, he would spread the day's newspapers across the table and go through the various headlines with his kids and explain the editorial decisions that were made and the biases at work and kind of critique the framing of the stories. He would take his kids on tours of the printing press. He would bring politicians and dignitaries to dinner. And what he said was that his animating motivation in all of this was to give something of value, leave something meaningful, an inheritance to his children the way that his father had for him. A quote that I found that he once gave was that he said, I don't know any son of any prominent media family who hasn't wanted to follow in the footsteps of his forebears. It's just too great a life now.

[Dave Davies]

He had two sons, Lachlan and James, born 15 months apart. Lachlan was a little older, James was a little younger. And the other major character in this is their sister, Liz. Those three were the children of Murdoch's second wife, Anna. There was a fourth, Prudence, known as Prue, and she was the daughter of his previous marriage. But those three, James, Lachlan and Liz, were the main characters for most of this drama. James and Lachlan would both eventually play prominent roles in the businesses and would be rivals for succession over the years at various times. But James didn't start out that way, did he? I mean, he went a whole different direction out of college and thereafter.

[McKay Coppins]

Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think that there was an assumption early on that Laughlin, as the eldest son, was the natural successor. And as they kind of grew up and acquired their own personalities, it was clear that Lachlan was more similar to Rupert. He was charismatic. He was, you know, kind of self consciously emulative of his dad. James was a little bit more of a rebel. He was interested in character, countercultural things and music and art. He got piercings and tattoos at the dinner table. He would kind of needle his dad with contrarian questions. And as they got older, James developed more moderate to liberal politics, whereas Lachlan kind of followed and lockstep with his dad. But James really didn't think that he ever would have a chance to run the companies. And I think because of that, it almost created more space for him to explore his own interests. He dropped out of Harvard to start an independent hip hop label with his friends, and they went and kind of scoured Brooklyn for emerging rap talent. And he almost kind of pushed back against early efforts to pull him into the media world. There's a great story about when he was interning at one of his father's newspapers in Australia. He actually fell asleep at a press conference, and somebody took a picture of him, and it ended up in a rival newspaper. So, you know, he was, I think, very early, sort of staking out a position as somebody who's not going to follow in his father's footsteps. He'll leave that to his brother. But that didn't last long.

[Dave Davies]

So I want to move us into the Trump era here. Lachlan Murdoch, the elder son, had left the company. He'd been in Australia for many years. And then in 2015, he moves back, gets an office in Los Angeles. He's with the company. James, the younger brother, has an office in New York. Putting them in kind of an awkward position, both being prominent executives in the company. And then in 2015, Donald Trump appears on the scene as a presidential candidate. You know, and one question I've always had is how much Rupert Murdoch is motivated by an ideological agenda as opposed to, you know, accumulating in wealth and power. And you write that in 2016, Rupert Murdoch was openly scornful of Trump's candidacy, at first saying his election would be the end of the Republican Party. But once he had momentum, you write, the Fox News primetime lineup turned into a four hour Trump commercial. How did James regard this turn in Fox News?

[McKay Coppins]

Yeah, I think it was really disillusioning for him. He had always had different political views than his dad, and he knew that. But what he told me is that he'd always assumed that his dad had political views, that he had a political ideology. Yes, Rupert was kind of this puckish anti establishment figure. Yes, his media outlets often delighted in needling the establishment, but he believed that beneath all the kind of mischief making was a set of real beliefs. He thought his dad was a devoted free marketeer, an internationalist who supported American global power. He had heard his dad talk about immigration as a source of industry and ingenuity in America. And in a lot of ways, Rupert's brand of conservatism was miles apart from Trump's. And yet, as soon as Rupert realized that his audience loved Trump, he pivoted. And immediately his outlets started to support Trump. The Wall Street Journal Even started running editorials defending his policies. The New York Post was running covers celebrating Trump. And it dawned on James that there actually were no ideas at the center of all these media outlets. Right. It was really all about accumulating power and profit. And I think for James, who had grown up hearing his dad sermonize about how important it was for the media business to take their role seriously, this was profoundly discouraging and also eye opening.

[Dave Davies]

And Lachlan was still in the company. Do we know what his attitude was towards the Fox News embrace of Trump and what his relationship was like with James during this time?

[McKay Coppins]

Yeah, well, this is the other thing that surprised James during Trump's rise was, you know, how quickly Laughlin kind of got on board. He said that he had always thought of Lachlan as sort of affable and dilettante, ish and friendly and not really that interested in politics at all. But James told me that while Trump was running for president in 2016, and when he would do something James considered outrageous, he would say, you know, bring it up with Lachlan, for example, his proposed Muslim travel ban, and he would expect Lachlan say, oh, yeah, that's terrible. But instead, he would kind of retreat to this knee jerk, anti Hillary stance. And over time, James started paying more attention to Laughlin and found that his older brother was willing to indulge in pretty reactionary and even, in his words, white nativist ideas. And I should note that a spokesperson for Lachlan pushed back against this characterization, called it false. But I think it's safe to say that the Trump era was one of several wedges at this time that was driven between James and Lachlan as they tried to run the family media empire together.

[Dave Davies]

So James gradually became a bit more public about his views. I mean, particularly he put out a statement about Trump's remarks on the march in Charlottesville. Trump saying that there were very fine people in the tiki torch march there. And then there was another occasion when there were terrible forest fires in Australia and some media, I think the Daily Beast asked for comment about, well, what about the fact that the Murdoch papers in Australia ignore climate change as an element of all this? What happened?

[McKay Coppins]

Yeah, James at that point had stepped down as CEO of Fox, but was still on the News Corp. Board. And he had always been taught not to answer questions like that. And generally he didn't answer those questions even when he disagreed with his dad or disagreed with the way that the media outlets were being run. He would kind of keep it to himself or express his disagreements privately try to push back internally. At this moment, it was 2020. He decided that he was just going to throw caution to the wind and answer a reporter's question. And he released a statement with his wife through a spokesman saying that their views on climate are well established. Their frustration with some of the News Corp. And Fox coverage of the topic is also well known. They're particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary. And let me tell you, it did not go over well on the News Court board. This was seen as a profound act of disloyalty on James Murdoch's part. And he was basically told that he either needed to resign from the board or he would be forced off. And so later that year, he officially resigned and released a statement saying that he had disagreements with some of the company's strategic decisions and the editorial output of the news outlets, and that was that.

[Dave Davies]

McKay Coppins is a staff writer for the Atlantic. His new article is Growing Up Murdoch, James Murdoch on Mind Games, Sibling Rivalry, and the War for the Family Media Empire. He'll be back to talk more after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR weekend.

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[Dave Davies]

So let's get to the court battle that's at the heart of this story. You know, there was a plan in place for many, many years, a trust which said that when Rupert Murdoch passed away that the voting rights in the company would be split among four siblings. You know, Lachlan and James, the two boys, Liz, their sister, and then Prue, who was their sister from a previous marriage. And to a lot of observers, that meant that it might be James who had the upper hand over Laughlin, because it was assumed that the two sisters might work with him in terms of the future direction of the company. This was problematic for Rupert Murdoch. Right. So he hatches a plan. What does he do?

[McKay Coppins]

Right. In 2023, Rupert begins working secretly with his son Lachlan and a consortium of executives and lawyers to rewrite the family trust in such a way that will concentrate complete control of the family business with Lachlan and essentially cut out his other three children from having a voice in the business. They code name this initiative, Project Family Harmony, and they spend several months drawing up detailed legal memos. And at the end of 2023, they basically spring it on James and his sisters that Rupert is planning to rewrite the trust and that Lachlan will be fully in charge once he's gone. James and his sisters experienced this as a profound betrayal. This arrangement had been made at the insistence of their mother, Anna, when she was divorcing Rupert, actually. And the idea had been that she saw the way her soon to be ex husband played their kids off each other, how he played favorites, how he pitted them against each other, and she worried that their lives would become consumed with kind of a never ending quest for the crown. And she wanted the family trust to basically establish that all four of those kids would have an equal say in the business when he was gone. And she thought that this would actually incentivize them all to get along and to work together. In fact, she gave up quite a lot of money in the divorce in exchange for this agreement. And I think that part of what made James and his sister so upset about this is that it wasn't just their father kind of betraying them. He was going back on a promise he had made to their mother a long time ago.

[Dave Davies]

This trial began in September 2024 in this county courthouse. James took the stand. What did he say the experience was like for him emotionally?

[McKay Coppins]

He told me that he had gone into the trial resolving to kind of approach it in a spirit of, like corporate combat, right. And he told me, I'm good at that. You know, you stiffen your spine, you harden your tummy. And then he walked into the courtroom each day, and he would look across the courtroom and see his father and his brother on the other side. These men whom he had loved, who he had believed had loved him, with, whom he'd shared holidays and family memories and now was no longer speaking to. And he said the question that just kept coming to him was, how did we let it come to this? On the third day of the trial when he testified, he said that he recounted a dinner at which Lachlan effectively ended their relationship over proposed sale of the film and TV studio to Disney. And James surprised himself by beginning to cry. And he didn't think that he would get that emotional. You know, he had really prepared for it. But there was something just so fundamentally sad about what had happened to his family that kind of caught up with him at that moment.

[Dave Davies]

After all this testimony, it didn't go particularly well for Rupert. It went much better for James and his siblings side of it. And this all came down to a single man, Edmund Gorman, who's the Washoe County Probate commissioner. This multi billion dollar company and all this comes down to one man, one county official and he issues a clear ruling, right?

[McKay Coppins]

Yeah. He ruled that Rupert could not amend the trust in the way that he wanted to, that he had not established that he was acting in good faith or in the best interest of the beneficiaries. And that essentially the status quo would remain, the trust would stay as it was, and when Rupert died of the business would be split four ways among his four oldest children.

[Dave Davies]

Rupert and Laughlin have appealed. Is it likely to stand, do you think? What's the course from here?

[McKay Coppins]

Yeah, it's a good question. James and his sisters feel good about where they are. They think it's unlikely that given how sweeping and definitive the ruling was by the probate commissioner that it will be overturned. But that doesn't mean it's the end of the story. I think everyone expects that if this particular initiative doesn't work, Rupert will look for other ways to sideline James. In particular, whether that means a buyout, whether that means an attempt to sever James sub trust from the rest of the trust. There were a lot of possibilities discussed by the Project Family harmony team in 2023 and James suspects that there will be other efforts. But you know, time is ticking here, right. Rupert is 93 years old. There's no telling how much time he has left. And so if he's going to continue to make these moves, he's going to have to figure out pretty quickly what to do if he wants to get James out of the picture.

[Dave Davies]

You know, you note that James and his wife Catherine have spent millions on political contributions, mostly to Democrats, I think, and to, you know, pro democracy causes and other philanthropic work, particularly climate change. Is it fair to assume that if this verdict holds, that when Rupert Murdoch dies, Fox News is not going to be the same product?

[McKay Coppins]

You know, this was one question that I asked repeatedly to James and Catherine, and I think, understandably they were a little bit cagey because this exact question has been central to the litigation with Rupert. Rupert is basically arguing that if James is allowed to have his say, Fox News will be defanged, it will become liberal, it will lose all its audience, and the profit center of the Murdoch empire will be destroyed. What James says is that he's not necessarily interested in turning Fox News into msnbc. Right? He's not trying to fundamentally change the political slant of the network. He just wants it to be more responsible. And he said, you know, Fox News could still report from a conservative perspective without, for example, platforming quack doctors who rail against vaccines or, you know, putting an oil shill on the air and pretending that he's an expert on climate change. That basically, with the correct editorial guardrails, with the right professionals running the network, Fox News could be a responsible contributor to the national political discourse. I think there is a genuine and fair question to be raised about how much that would hurt the value of Fox News, though. How many viewers would they lose to right wing competitors if they lost kind of their hard edged pro Trump reporting, for example? I don't know. But James just believes that, that if his family is going to continue to operate these media outlets, they should at least make an effort to ensure that they are responsible members of the media landscape.

[Dave Davies]

You know, I mentioned the HBO series succession in the introduction. You know, I thought it was great television, but I wouldn't have guessed that the people who actually lived lives like this would be interested in it because, I mean, come on, it's television. But, but actually you discovered that members of the family were into it, right?

[McKay Coppins]

Yeah, well, it was. One of the weird things about doing these interviews is I found myself repeatedly thinking, I swear this sounds familiar. And James would say, no, I've never told anyone this before. And it would occur to me that I had seen it on this HBO show or a fictionalized version of it throughout my reporting. It was one of the strangers phenomena was just how much the Murdoch family was obsessed with this show. You know, James told me he watched the first episode and couldn't watch beyond it because it was too painful. And I can see that. Imagine if a TV show was made about your own life and family. It might be hard to watch, but other members of his family were obsessed with it and specifically obsessed with trying to figure out who in the family was leaking to the show's writer. There were just so many scenes and moments in the show that felt so uncannily. Familiar and true to life that everybody was convinced that somebody was kind of sharing family secrets with the writers. You know, Evans James believed his sister was his sister swore she wasn't, but believed her ex husband had. I actually finally just went to Jesse Armstrong who created the show and asked him point blank, you know, who in the family were you talking to? And he was adamant that no one. You know, he didn't have a mole on the inside. He kind of laughed at what he called the psychodrama around this thing in the family, but he said, you know, the truth is they've all leaked so many stories against each other over the years that we had plenty of press reports we could draw on for our own stories.

[Dave Davies]

McKay Coppins, thank you so much. This is interesting.

[McKay Coppins]

Thank you.

[Dave Davies]

McKay Coppins is a staff writer for the Atlantic. His new article is Growing Up Murdoch, James Murdoch on mind games, sibling rivalry, and the war for the family media empire Flo is an animated movie from Latvia that follows an unlikely collection of animals who were brought together by a massive flood that overwhelms the countryside. The film, which is now streaming on max, already won animation prizes from the Golden Globe, the New York film critics and the Los Angeles film critics, among others, and it's received Oscar nominations for both Best Animated Feature and Best International Film. Our critic at large, John Powers, says it is quite simply wonderful.

[John Powers]

Perhaps the most famous line in ancient Greek thought comes from the philosopher Heraclitus who said, you cannot step into the same river twice. That's because reality is not a static thing, but an ever changing flux. The fluidity of life runs through flow. A marvelous animated movie from Latvia which has already been showered with acclaim. Directed by Gint Zobolodis, it takes a simple a sundry crew of animals get caught in a flood and without a single word being uttered, transports us into a radiant fantasy. At once fun and affecting. Flo made me think of everything from Spirited Away and the incredible journey to the story of Noah and the recent floods in North Carolina. Flo centers on a slate gray cat whose home is a big house in the forest surrounded by larger than life feline sculptures. It sleeps upstairs in a double bed whose emptiness offers our first inkling that there are no people about and indeed no humans will appear in the film. Instead, we follow this watchful, eloquent eyed loner as it prowls around and gets chased by a pack of dogs, a pursuit interrupted by a deluge that comes whooshing towards them. The water keeps rising higher and higher, and just as the cat is about to be washed away. It's able to jump on a sailboat occupied by, of all things, a capybara. Soon they're joined by a scene stealing lemur, who has scavenged various human knick knacks. Like the mirror it keeps looking at itself in, it's like the opening of a joke. A cat, a capybara and a lemur walk into a bar. As the three float together on their small ark. They're joined by a golden retriever and a predatory secretary bird, which boasts a crazy beautiful headdress of feathers and a body like an eagle's glued onto a heron's legs. This odd band of survivors seeks to ride out the flood, a dangerous enterprise that forces them to work together and leads them to rescue others in distress, even if they don't always want to. So Melodus pays these animals the respect of observing them closely. He deftly captures the cat's yawns, the movements of the lemur's ring tail as it's preening, and the amiable torpor of the capybara, a creature whose meme inducing cuteness was recently celebrated in the New Yorker by Gary Steingart. Foregoing all dialogue, but using genuine animal sounds. Flow is a long way from Zootopia or Eddie Murphy's smart aleck donkey in Shrek. While it does humanize its characters a bit, my own beloved cat Nico would sooner drown than team up with a lemur. Flo captures the way animals behave in the wild, as in the ruthless fight for dominance between two secretary birds, which leaves one of them unable to fly. The movie weaves together bursts of adventure. Your heart may pound as the cat has to swim for dear life. With poetic moments of transcendence I won't spoil by describing. Like Miyazaki, Zobo Lotus uses animation to conjure a big, thrilling world of imagination where too much American animation feels frantic. Desperate to keep our attention, Flo's images possess a kinetic elegance. They have the alluring immersiveness of a video game. Complete, alas, with a few visual glitches you won't find in Pixar. Then again, this is not a big budget Hollywood project. It was made on the open source software Blender and cost just $3.7 million. To put this in perspective, that's less than 1/50 the budget of Inside Out 2. Flow is conceived as a universal story that weaves together magic and realism. While the cat and dogs could live in our own neighborhood, the rest of the cast comes from the likes of Latin America, Africa and Madagascar. There's even a whale from the briny deep that surges up almost biblically from the flood waters. This whale's appearance inland is one of the film's suggestions, melancholy but never overt, that the great flood we're seeing may be a product of climate change. Yet Flow is far from a political tract. Rather, it's a classic fable about learning to adapt to life's ever changing flow, no matter how dire things may sometimes get. And like most classic fables, it offers an enduring lesson. A group of creatures overcome their differences and learn to help one another. It's solidarity, not selfishness, that will save them.

[Dave Davies]

John Powers reviewed the animated film Flow, which is up for two Oscars. Coming up, Harvard professor of Public Policy Elizabeth Linos talks about the extraordinary measures Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has taken to shrink the size of the federal government. I'm Dave Davies and this is FRESH AIR Weekend.

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[Dave Davies]

Could Elon Musk establish a new bathroom breaks policy for more than 2 million federal employees? Well, he hasn't. But since the Trump administration took office and gave Musk's Department of Government Efficiency a mandate to shrink the government, Musk has wielded an astonishing level of authority over the federal workforce. After gaining access to the Treasury Department's massive payments system, Musk and his team have dismissed thousands of employees, terminated countless contracts and targeted two government agencies created by Congress for elimination. Last weekend, federal workers received an email instructing them to reply with five bullet points stating what they'd accomplished the previous week. Musk added in a social media post that failure to respond would be taken as a resignation. That got pushback from several Trump appointed agency leaders who told their employees not to respond. Much of what Musk has done is under court challenge, but President Trump has said he'd like to see him become even more aggressive. To help us understand these efforts to drastically reshape the American government, we've invited Elizabeth Linus to join us. She's the Emma Bloomberg Associate professor of Public Policy and Management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and director of the People Lab, which does research on how to recruit, retrain and support the government workforce and integrate evidence based policy making into government. Earlier in her career, she was a policy advisor to Prime Minister George Papandreou of Greece, pursuing government reform at a time of financial financial crisis. Well, Elizabeth Linos, welcome to FRESH air.

[Elizabeth Linos]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Dave Davies]

There's a perception in all of this recent activity that the public payroll is bloated, not just inefficient, but just too many people. How does the federal workforce compare with past decades?

[Elizabeth Linos]

Yeah, you're right that this perception seems to persist. But if you look at the numbers, the size of the federal workforce has stayed relatively constant since the 60s even though the population of the US has grown, even though our expectations about what government should do has grown. So if you just look at the numbers, we're about at 2 million federal employees, a little over 2 million employees. And that really hasn't changed over time. If you look in terms of the budget, again, we're not seeing significant amounts of bloat on the public payroll. In fact, the budget for these workers is about 6% of the federal budget. So in a government that spends 6 to 7 trillion, doll, this is really not a matter of bloat either on numbers or on budget. But you're right that this belief seems to persist over multiple administrations, both Republican and Democratic administrations.

[Dave Davies]

So let's talk about what's happened here. Do we know how many government employees have been taken off the payroll so far by dose? More or less?

[Elizabeth Linos]

Well, this keeps changing every day. But but we have some information from the initial deferred resignation. So as you'll remember, the first stage of this process was an offer to buyout employees that committed to resigning. At that stage, about 75,000 people resigned or took the buyout offer. But I want to put that number in context. So that might sound like a very large number, but in fact is very similar to just the natural retirement rate that we see every year in government. And when I say retirement, I do mean retirement. It doesn't include the regular turnover in terms of resignations or other reasons why people separate, it's about half of regular turnover in any typical year. And so, from the perspective of Doge, that first attempt to get people to resign seems to have not worked, at least as planned.

[Dave Davies]

Let's pause on that for a second. I mean, what does that tell you about how government employees feel about their jobs and about this buyout offer, if we can call it that.

[Elizabeth Linos]

Yeah. So I think what we heard from the Doge team and others in government was this assumption that if we offered payouts to federal workers, they would all take it because they're all sitting around doing nothing anyway. There was this belief that this would be an easy exit strategy for people who are lazy or not hardworking or aren't motivated to do their job well. So if you start with that assumption, you offer people this buyout, and then people don't take it, you would have to question whether or not that initial assumption was right, that people were just sitting around waiting for a buyout. My sense is that this is at least a first piece of evidence that that's not what we're looking at in terms of the federal workforce.

[Dave Davies]

There was an extraordinary move, and I mentioned this in the introduction, which I think is a measure of Musk's influence in the government, that he got these emails sent to people weekend instructing them to reply with five bullet points stating what they'd accomplished the previous week. There was some pushback. Some agency had said, you don't have to do that. But Musk added in this social media post that failure to respond would be taken as a resignation. What was your reaction when you heard about this?

[Elizabeth Linos]

My first reaction was that this is an effort to make people hate their jobs at some fundamental level. And it reminds me of something that we've heard Russell Voetse, who's the OMB director, in private speeches, and it sounds like he said something along the lines of, we want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected when they wake up in the morning. We want them to not want to go to work. And so when I first saw this email, I thought, yep, that's how you would do it. If you look at the evidence around what it takes to have happy and engaged and productive team, trust in your leadership and feeling like you're valued by your manager is fundamental for people to be able to do their job well, not just in the public sector, but in the private sector and the nonprofit sector as well. So this is a message that very clearly is saying, we don't think you're doing anything useful, and you're going to need to affirm what you do every day to justify your job. If you just take this at a human level. Anyone who's receiving that type of email from their boss is getting the message that they are not wanted and they are not valued. So to me, it seems part of this broader effort to make people not want to work for government. The second part, which I think is still up for discussion in the courts, is what does it mean for someone from Doge and Elon Musk specifically to send an email of that nature that implies resignations or layoffs without going through any of the formal processes associated with layoffs and performance evaluations.

[Dave Davies]

You know, I wonder if workers are, while they're getting these messages from the top, are having their personal supervisors reassure them at all, saying, look, this is not something we're doing. What you do is important. We want to keep doing it. Hang in there. Have you heard things like that?

[Elizabeth Linos]

You know, anytime you see an administration that is so hostile towards their civil service, of course you're going to have people in career positions that are trying to navigate what that looks like for their staff. You know, what we're hearing, at least on our side, are conversations about how to reassure people that their work matters and that their work is important. One question that has often come up, even before this period, is that a lot of what government does is invisible to the American taxpayer. People don't know exactly what the Department of Energy does unless there's a problem. People don't fully understand necessarily what happens to make sure our food and our air is safe. And that's on purpose. Right? We hear about government when there's a problem, but on any given day, there's millions of people that are trying to keep Americans safe in ways that are invisible. And so one of the questions that has come up as part of this process is what would it look like if we could bring those stories to the surface, explain to people and show people what it means to have a functioning government? Would they still want all those programs if there was a clear understanding of how that would affect their lives?

[Dave Davies]

You know, there have been media reports of people who were discharged with language about poor performance or similar language, but who have said in interviews that they've had nothing but positive performance reports? Generally speaking, what kinds of rights do they have to appeal these firings?

[Elizabeth Linos]

You know, under normal circumstances, the way that you would appeal something like this is going through the U.S. merit Systems Protection Board, so the MSPB. This is. This is independent quasi judicial agency that is meant to protect federal employees from unfair or improper personnel actions. One of these protections is the protection against being fired for reasons that are unrelated to merit and are more related to political influence or personal bias. And so there is a process within the MSPB to appeal these decisions if a federal employee believes that their wrongfully terminated. The purpose of the board is really to ensure that the Civil Service remains nonpartisan and maintain those protections. And so it seems that some employees might go through that path to appeal these decisions. There are other ways that we might see lawsuits or legal appeals happening, but that's the traditional way an employee would go about appealing something like this.

[Dave Davies]

You know, in writing about these recent reductions, you wrote the administration seems to be weakening or fully eliminating teams that were doing exactly the kind of work doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, claims to value. Focus on data evaluation and customer service teams that have spent years reducing bureaucratic red tape, modernizing service delivery, and bringing in critical tech talent. In other words, there were people out there doing the kind of work that DOGE was supposed to do, how to get more for the taxpayer's dollar. Some might be skeptical of that statement. Can you give us an example of this?

[Elizabeth Linos]

Yeah, absolutely. And again, you know, these things take time. But under multiple administrations, including the last Trump administration, there were people in government who were dedicated to finding inefficiencies in government and finding ways to improve the customer experience for residents. Some of these cases are easy to see after the change has happened. So, for example, if you try to go renew your passport today, you don't to take months and months. You don't have to go to the post office. You can just do that online. The reason you can do that is because there was a team of people in government that were trying to figure out what are the exact pain points in this long bureaucratic process. How can we simplify them? How can we create a user interface that is easy for a customer to access online and make it as seamless and as simple as possible? So anytime you see a simplification on the front end, there's a team of people before working really hard to make that happen on the back end. There are other examples where previous administrations invested in data and analytics and evaluation support. All of that is really about improving how government functions and having the data to support that. So rather than making decisions based on an anecdotal experience or keeping the status quo, really investing in this fundamental question, Is the program working? How can we improve it? Those teams had a lot of Successes that were just about to go live. So, for example, there was a pilot program associated with making it easier to pay your taxes. Everybody in the country complains about the process of having to file your taxes, and they're quite right. Huge effort was done within government to pilot a new approach that would have made it easier for people to file their taxes for free. It seems like those efforts are all being now gutted, and it's unclear why that would be the case. If the purpose of DOGE is to make government run more efficiently, the administration's.

[Dave Davies]

Response to some of the complaints that have arisen is essentially that, look, extreme times sometimes demand extreme measures. Government spending is out of control. Musk himself has said, yes, we will make mistakes, but we will correct them quickly. What's your reaction to that? Do you think things could get better with time?

[Elizabeth Linos]

I think it's helpful to remember what we ask of our government. If we say that we can just turn the government off and on again, in this way, we're kind of missing the fundamentals of what is needed for an economy to be able to develop, for people to be able to take risks and innovate in the private sector and the nonprofit sector. And so, yes, of course we can correct mistakes. But even with a few weeks worth of this process, we're seeing harms that are not going to be easily undone, not only in terms of local economies that are going to suffer, but, for example, data that was regularly collected that is now not going to be collected. It's really hard to go back and fix that afterwards. And at a fundamental level, it's taken generations of work to try to convince motivated, specialized talent to work for government. It's going to be really hard to rebuild that narrative after what we've heard over the past few weeks. So I'm worried that some of this harm can't be undone quickly, and we're going to have to work collectively to rebuild trust both within government and in that kind of social contract with residents to fix some of this over time.

[Dave Davies]

You know, something like 80% of the federal workers live outside the Washington, D.C. area. What might be the economic impact of these job cuts on communities where workers live?

[Elizabeth Linos]

This is an area where a lot of people are starting to see rumblings of problems in local economies, and we might expect to see larger impacts over time. But you're absolutely right. Most people who work for the federal government don't in fact, live in the Washington, D.C. area. So they're part of of communities and labor markets that might be drastically affected by this, and this is going to be true across different agencies. So the examples that we've started seeing are employees who work, for example, for the National Park Service. There are parts of North Carolina or Arizona where many layoffs are happening, and that's going to affect the local economy. We're starting to hear more about cuts for the irs. The IRS has hubs across the country. And so if you work in Kansas City or if you work in Ogden, Utah, you might be affected, not just because your neighbors and friends are being laid off, but because that's going to affect the local economy in a way that affects everyone who lives there.

[Dave Davies]

This effort is really just underway. I mean, it's been a few weeks, really. Do you have any idea what to expect in the future? Where do you think this is going to go?

[Elizabeth Linos]

You're right that given what has happened in the past few weeks, it's really hard to predict what the federal workforce and what government will look like a year from now. One thing that I'm thinking about in my work is what does it mean to try to cut the federal workforce in this way? So I imagine one of three things might happen. One is they will successfully cut the federal workforce in a way that immediately reduces the quality of services that the government can deliver. So we'll see that in longer processing times, we'll see that in more dangerous health outbreaks, we might see that in worse roads and safety. That's one option. A second option is that this will be similar to what happened during the Clinton administration. And it will become very clear that we needed those government workers. And so we'll expand the federal budget by bringing in more contractors. Contractors are not only more expensive in some cases, but also have fewer layers of accountability. So we'll have less transparency and less accountability for how services are delivered. There's a third option which is probably the largest threat to democracy overall, which is that we're going to see a replacement of professional, nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists. And that could have all sorts of ramifications for what the next few years look like.

[Dave Davies]

What's an example of one of these cuts that will be apparent to citizens soon?

[Elizabeth Linos]

I think it really depends on which citizens we're talking about. One area that I'm looking at quite closely are cuts to the VA and to anyone who works in related medical fields. That seems to be an area where we might see effects very, very soon, where people are not able to access services that they've been promised because of a reduction in the workforce that could lead to long term challenges both in terms of health and mental health and other services that have been promised to veterans where we could really see major disruptions soon. There's kind of medium term effects that I'm expecting as we look at reductions to the IRS that could affect our ability to collect taxes in ways that has long term impacts for people. So there's many ways that this might show up in people's lives. In some ways, the areas where we're seeing a lot of concentrated frustration right now are things that affect people's lives today, like they want to go to a national park and it's closing earlier because there aren't enough staff or the bathrooms are gonna be dirty or closed because there aren't enough staff. But they may not be thinking about what's happening on the side of the CDC protection against future outbreaks in terms of avian flu or in terms of measles, where that could have huge consequences in people's lives and could have consequences relatively soon but are harder to trace back to these cuts in federal spending.

[Dave Davies]

Elizabeth Lenos, thank you so much for speaking with us.

[Elizabeth Linos]

Thank you for having me.

[Dave Davies]

Elizabeth Lenos is the Emma Bloomberg Associate professor of Public Policy and Management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. FRESH AIR WEEKEND is produced by Teresa Madden. FRESH air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.

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